Editing Portal:Linux (section)

=== Container images and cloud images ===

Modern container and cloud images changed Perl’s default-availability story. A traditional full Linux server often includes Perl. A minimal container image often does not.

This distinction is now critical. A script beginning with:

<pre>
#!/usr/bin/perl
</pre>

may run immediately on Debian, Ubuntu, or Slackware, but fail on Alpine, a minimal RHEL-family image, or a stripped-down OCI image. Even when `/usr/bin/perl` exists, only a minimal module set may be available.

For container work, the correct approach is to declare Perl explicitly in the image:

<pre>
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y perl
</pre>

or:

<pre>
RUN dnf install -y perl-interpreter
</pre>

or:

<pre>
RUN apk add --no-cache perl
</pre>

For production Perl applications, the official Perl container images or purpose-built distribution images are often a better choice than relying on a random base image.