Upgrade to 10.6 was a downgrade for Perl, specifically GD image generation.

Clearly a 32 versus 64 problem and improper install of 10.6.

But, I did not know where to fix it, and HOW SIMPLE WAS THIS!

THANK YOU.
Rev John.

Doing `strings` on each perl binary file does provide a bit more info. I think the /usr/bin/perl is not the perl VM but an Apple version switcher executable. In fact its not even clear that /usr/bin/perl5.8.9 and /usr/bin/perl5.10.0 are VM’s but instead also just wrappers.

So running /usr/bin/perl5.10.0 will probably always run 5.10.0 but it still also checks the VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT env variable.

BTW: If you building CPAN module directly with Apple’s Perl then you may have trouble switching between versions (especially worrying would be 32bit to 64bit). No idea if Apple has catered for this?

/I3az/

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 86000 Jun 24 2009 perl

perl: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
perl (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
perl (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
perl (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

if I do an `ls -l` and `file` on per5.10.0, I get:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 51200 Jun 24 2009 perl5.10.0

perl5.10.0: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
perl5.10.0 (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
perl5.10.0 (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
perl5.10.0 (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

So, they appear to be compiled in the same way, but their not the same file. If I simply move perl to perl.old and symbolically link perl5.8.9 to perl, I don’t get errors when I try to build the DBD::mysql PERL module.