The latest version of XML::Simple won't build with a pure perl implementation of XML::Simple::PurePerl. This is the error I'm getting: ======================================================================== ===== Fatal error: Your default XML parser (XML::SAX::PurePerl) is broken. There are known bugs in the PurePerl parser included with version 0.13 and 0.14 of XML::SAX. The XML::Simple tests will fail with this parser. One way to avoid the problem is to install XML::SAX::Expat - it will install itself as the system default XML parser and then you will be able to install XML::Simple successfully. XML::SAX::Expat is also much faster than XML::SAX::PurePerl so you probably want it anyway. ======================================================================== ===== It seems there should be a dependency for p5-xml-sax-expat, Even with the expat version installed, it wouldn't build because it seems like when installed via port doesn't it doesn't set itself up as the default parser. I ended up creating a SAX.ini with the following line: ParserPackage = XML::SAX::Expat (0.37) Then I installed p5-xml-sax-expat and then installed p5-xml-simple