From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Nov 23 22:12:13 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1845BC94 for ; Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:12:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from outgoing.tristatelogic.com (segfault.tristatelogic.com [69.62.255.118]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E88AD2E07 for ; Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:12:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from segfault-nmh-helo.tristatelogic.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.tristatelogic.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5725C3B00D for ; Sat, 23 Nov 2013 14:12:12 -0800 (PST) From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" To: ports list Subject: Re: Upgrading Perl... Somebody just shoot me and put me out of my misery! In-Reply-To: Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 14:12:12 -0800 Message-ID: <87614.1385244732@server1.tristatelogic.com> X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.16 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 22:12:13 -0000 In message Anton Afanasyev wrote: >On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 12:17 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette > wrote: > >> >> OK, but please help me understand here. What is it, exactly, that is _now_ >> being threaded, that wasn't threaded before? >> ... >> (Part of what is confusing about this is that I was under the impression... >> perhaps naive... that Perl was already set up for threads support quite >> some >> long time ago.) >> >Perl _was_ set up to be threaded (although I have no idea what is actually >threaded there), but the port option to enable it being threaded was not >enabled by default. (One might well ask "why not?" but we will leave that question aside for the moment.) >The implication is that if you compiled it with default >options, it wasn't threaded. But now it (the option) has been changed to be >enabled by default, and so the point of that UPDATING entry was that if you >are running with default options, then your Perl will switch from >non-threaded to threaded when you recompile it, OK, that part, at least is clear. >and you will thus need to recompile all ports that depend on Perl. This is the part that is still utterly baffling. Why would _anything_ that is in any way dependent upon the Perl interpreter need to be rebuilt? In this switch to threads=on, has the language itself changed? And if not, shouldn't the change to multi-threading capability within the interpreter be utterly transparent to (and a non-event for) any and all pre-existing Perl code? Obviously, there's something that I'm missing, but I have no idea what it might be. >IF you already had this option enabled to begin with, I believe you don't >need to recompile and reinstall anything (including Perl itself, but do >note that the ports system will then keep thinking that Perl hasn't been >upgraded - which isn't an issue, since the only thing changed here is the >defaults and not any functionality, and so you can just wait to recompile >it when something more serious changes; this is up to you though). > >Hope this clears it up a bit. Well, I thank you for your attempt to help clear up the confusion, but I do confess that the need to rebuild... or the value of rebuilding... all of the stuff that _depends_ on Perl is still rather entirely mystifying. I'm *not* claiming that the maintainer didn't have a good reason for suggesting these rebuilds. I'm only saying that *I* personally still don't have a good understanding of what the need for this is/was. Regards, rfg