01.28.09
Upgrading Compress::Zlib breaks CPAN
If you upgraded the perl module Compress::Zlib (or related), you may suddenly find CPAN stops working. You may start getting an error like the following:
Can't call method "value" on an undefined value at /usr/share/perl5/IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm line 64.
As it turns out, there’s a whole slew of Compress::Zlib modules and IO::Compress modules that are all related. They are all packaged separately, and have the same version numbers. The problem happens if you upgrade one of the modules, without upgrading all of them.
The solution: make sure to upgrade all the modules to the same version at the same time. This means that if you’re using CPAN, you might have to install the remainder by hand. A good check to find what modules differ for you is to run dpkg -l | grep compress | grep perl, and make sure versions match up.