The Perl source code is currently kept in a Git repository, which is browseable through a web interface at http://perl5.git.perl.org/.

The easiest way to copy the Perl 5 repository is to use git:

  git clone git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git perl

A mirror of the repository is found at http://github.com/github/perl. The master branch, where the development takes places, is named blead. The maintenance branches are named perl-5.XXX depending on the maintenance version.

For people who can't or don't want to use git, the latest sources are also available through rsync:

  rsync -avz rsync://perl5.git.perl.org/APC/perl-current .

or, for the maintenance branches:

  rsync -avz rsync://perl5.git.perl.org/APC/perl-5.10.x .
  rsync -avz rsync://perl5.git.perl.org/APC/perl-5.8.x .

For more details on working with the Perl source code, please see the perlrepository documentation.