66

How do you find the version of an installed Perl module?

This is in an answer down at the bottom, but I figure it important enough to live up here. With these suggestions, I create a function in my .bashrc

function perlmodver {
    perl -M$1 -e 'print "Version " . $ARGV[0]->VERSION . " of " . $ARGV[0] . \
    " is installed.\n"' $1
}
Drew Stephens
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    See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1920045/how-can-i-get-the-version-and-location-of-an-installed-perl-module – Ether Dec 29 '09 at 01:02
  • this seems to work better perl -M$1 -e 'print $ARGV[0] . " " . $ARGV[0]->VERSION . " is installed.\n" ' $1 – mysiar Nov 08 '22 at 08:49

12 Answers12

75

Most modules (especially ones from The CPAN) have a $VERSION variable:

perl -MSome::Module -le 'print $Some::Module::VERSION'
zigdon
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    this isn't abstracted to work with any module. not right answer. – Andy Ray Feb 17 '14 at 18:49
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    This works. However, on Windows it should quoted differently for it to work (example for [File::Fetch](http://perldoc.perl.org/File/Fetch.html)): `perl -MFile::Fetch -le "print $File::Fetch::VERSION"` - double quotes instead of single quotes (otherwise, an error message is the result: "Can't find string terminator "'" anywhere before EOF at -e line 1.") – Peter Mortensen Apr 16 '15 at 20:16
64

Why are you trying to get the version of the module? Do you need this from within a program, do you just need the number to pass to another operation, or are you just trying to find out what you have?

I have this built into the cpan (which comes with perl) with the -D switch so you can see the version that you have installed and the current version on CPAN:

$ cpan -D Text::CSV_XS

Text::CSV_XS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Fast 8bit clean version of Text::CSV
        H/HM/HMBRAND/Text-CSV_XS-0.54.tgz
        /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/darwin-2level/Text/CSV_XS.pm
        Installed: 0.32
        CPAN:      0.54  Not up to date
        H.Merijn Brand (HMBRAND)
        h.m.brand@xs4all.nl

If you want to see all of the out-of-date modules, use the -O (capital O) switch:

$ cpan -O
Module Name                                Local    CPAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apache::DB                                0.1300  0.1400
Apache::SOAP                              0.0000  0.7100
Apache::Session                           1.8300  1.8700
Apache::SizeLimit                         0.0300  0.9100
Apache::XMLRPC::Lite                      0.0000  0.7100
... and so on

If you want to see this for all modules you have installed, try the -a switch to create an autobundle.

brian d foy
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    (I know this is an old answer!) I tried -D and -O and cpan didn't understand those options. The manpage showed the options but perldoc didn't. What gives? – Mei Aug 15 '11 at 02:50
37

VERSION is a UNIVERSAL method of all Perl classes. You can use it to get the module version (if it has been set which it usually has).

Here is a one liner where you only have to add the module name once:

perl -le 'eval "require $ARGV[0]" and print $ARGV[0]->VERSION' Some::Module
jmcnamara
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27

There is a less-typing trick, that works provided your module doesn't have something insane like a Unix timestamp as a version number.

perl -MFoo::Bar\ 9999

This works because what it translates to is

use Foo::Bar 9999;

i.e. a version of Foo::Bar that's at least version 9999 or newer. And what you get is

Foo::Bar version 9999 required--this is only version 1.1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.

(Neat trick I learned from Matt Trout.)

Penfold
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  • I've been using this for ages, too. Couldn't remember where I picked it up from, but most likely I got it from the same place. – rjray Sep 26 '08 at 02:50
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    Minor change for a Windows command prompt (for whatever reason): perl -M"Foo::bar 9999" – igelkott Sep 27 '08 at 18:25
  • @igelkott: This did work with [File::Fetch](http://perldoc.perl.org/File/Fetch.html), `perl -M"File::Fetch 9999"` (64-bit Perl 5.18). Output: `File::Fetch version 9999 required--this is only version 0.46.`. However, the second line, "BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.", is confusing at first glance (listed in the answer). – Peter Mortensen Apr 16 '15 at 20:38
8

If you are lucky, the module will have a package variable named $VERSION:

$ perl -MCPAN -e 'print "$CPAN::VERSION\n"'
1.9205

This is needed for modules to be distributed on CPAN, but internally developed modules might follow a different convention or none at all.

Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
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  • This isn't actually needed for modules to be distributed on CPAN. Many distributions look at that variable to declare the version, but only the main module in the distro needs to do that. Look at any of the modules in Mojolicious that aren't Mojolicuous.pm, for instance. – brian d foy Nov 03 '16 at 00:53
6

Thanks for the answers! I've created a function in my .bashrc to easily find the version of a Perl module:

function perlmodver {
    perl -M$1 -e 'print $ARGV[0]->VERSION . "\n"' $1
}
Drew Stephens
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5

Easiest to remember and most robust version for me:

perl -e 'use Search::Elasticsearch; print $Search::Elasticsearch::VERSION;'
Jpsy
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4

Check out the pmtools scripts on CPAN. If you're using a Debian(-based) distro, there's also a handy pmtools package. This includes a script "pmvers" that tells you a module's version. It's quite handy.

It does something similar to the various one-liners folks posted, but it's a bit smarter about error handling, and can give you the version of more than one module at once.

Onlyjob
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Dave Rolsky
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2

I wrote a small script to report that: perlver.

This is a simple little tool that tells you what version of a module you have installed, and where the .pm file is located. It also ensures the module can be loaded successfully. It automatically converts ‘-’, ‘/’, or ‘\’ to ‘::’, so you can use a pathname or distribution name instead of the canonical module name.

It assumes that the module defines a $VERSION. If the module doesn't define a $VERSION, it will still tell you where the .pm file is, so you can examine it manually. You can also check several modules at once:

$ perlver CPAN DBD-Pg Getopt::Long
CPAN 1.7602 is
 /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm
DBD::Pg 1.49 is
 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/i686-linux/DBD/Pg.pm
Getopt::Long 2.36 is
 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/Getopt/Long.pm
cjm
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2

In addition, for modules that use Exporter.pm, you can get this information with this trick:

perl -MSome::Module=99999 -ex
Some::Module version 99999 required--this is only version 1.9205 at ...

For modules that don't use Exporter.pm, a slightly longer trick reports the same information:

perl -e'use Some::Module 99999'
Some::Module version 99999 required--this is only version 1.9205 at ...
tye
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1

We have the system perl (/usr/bin/perl) in Solaris 10, and above solutions are useless. Some of them report "module.pm is not installed", some of them have no output.

Here is the code which is helpful, which can list all modules and their version.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use ExtUtils::Installed;

my @modules;
my $installed = ExtUtils::Installed->new();

if (scalar(@ARGV) > 0) {

    @modules = @ARGV;

} else {

    @modules = $installed->modules();

}

print "Module\tVersion\n";

foreach (@modules) {

    print $_ . "\t" . $installed->version($_) . "\n";

}
BMW
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0

You can also take a look at App::module::version

$ module-version

The version of App::module::version in /home/yourself/perl5/lib/perl5 is 1.004
smonff
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