I am not aware of details about Perl versions, but is there a reason that
you don't use NetBSD's pkgsrc?  Or were you simply unaware of pkgsrc?  If
you chose not to install pkgsrc on your system when installing NetBSD, you
should be able to download the .tar.gz archive from the NetBSD site.

Normally, pkgsrc goes into /usr/pkgsrc, so you can just type:

 cd /usr/pkgsrc/lang/perl5
 make; make install

...and wait while the computer downloads, checks, unpacks, patchs,
configures, builds, and installs Perl for you.  (There's also a
perl5-current, I see; I don't really know what the distinction is, there.)

(From your message, I assume that you simply aren't aware of pkgsrc.  If,
for some reason, you can't use the version of Perl that builds out of
pkgsrc, you might still benefit from seeing how the pkgsrc
patches/configure scripts run.)

(Instead of ``make; make install'', I think that you could simply type
``make install''.  Normally, I simply type ``make update'', which also
cleans up the work-directories after installing.)



Re. virtual terminals: Yes, for some architectures.  Support hinges upon
the wscons (WorkStation CONSole); some NetBSD platforms use wscons, some
do not (yet?).  Virtual consoles are disabled by default on all platforms
in order to make system installation more uniform (I gather).

Depending on your platform, you may or may not be able to use virtual
consoles.  What platform are you using?  (Alpha, Amiga, i386, ...?)


Also, depending on exactly what you want the virtual consoles for, you may
simply configure your X window manager to let you hot-key between windows,
or you may use window(1) which ships with NetBSD, or the GNU ``screen''
out of NetBSD's pkgsrc.  (The latter two function within a standard
console, and can be run without starting X, or from within any XTerm.)
 

  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  --rkr@rkr.kcnet.com