Keeping in mind that I actually like where I'm working and the work that I do...we've outsourced the building of perl on Unix and that of any modules that need to be compiled (it took several rounds w/our tech support to find this out...it used to be them that built it). I can't compile even a simple module that involves xs (which is why I installed ActiveState on the laptop and do as much as I can there especially if I want compiled modules). The package provider has two packages that I'm aware of. Our department is using the 5.6.1 package, it includes DBD::Oracle, but it was compiled against an 8.x version of Oracle client libraries. We have Oracle version 10.2 installed on the development systems, though on production, it's 8.x and so DBI/DBD::Oracle works fine there. The perl 5.8.x package was compiled against Oracle version 10, but we're not yet going to upgrade and run regression testing against all the current stuff.
Then I found through the magic of google that chatr .../lib/perl/site_perl/..../auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.sl shows (on HP-UX, don't know where else), among other things, the files that DBD::Oracle needs to dynamically link to. Someone watching the output of this command asked, "Why don't you just copy those files to the system?". Huh. Duh! Hmm, do I have write permission to the $ORACLE_HOME lib directory? Hell, yes! (Surprise to me!). Copied those files from the production system, and hey, it works! Now I can continue developing, and testing, and stuff! :-)
