$ perldoc -q install The easiest way is to have a module also named CPAN do it for you. This module comes with perl version 5.004 and later. $ perl -MCPAN -eshell cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.59_54) ReadLine support enabled cpan> install Some::Module To manually install the CPAN module, or any well-behaved CPAN module for that matter, follow these steps: 1 Unpack the source into a temporary area. 2 perl Makefile.PL 3 make 4 make test 5 make install If your version of perl is compiled without dynamic loading, then you just need to replace step 3 (make) with make perl and you will get a new perl binary with your extension linked in.