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To: Tony Kimball <alk@Think.COM>
cc: gclarkii@main.gbdata.com, current@freefall.freebsd.org
Subject: Re: perl4 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 20 Mar 1996 08:34:00 CST."
             <199603201434.IAA19341@compound> 
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 07:49:50 -0800
Message-ID: <559.827336990@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> I absolutely agree that we need perl (or more accurately that "FreeBSD
> needs perl").  I claim that it does not belong in the base OS, because
> it is not tightly coupled, and because most perl users will use the
> most recent version, and *not* the version shipped, so it is a legacy,
> baggage.

You apparently miss the point that perl is *used* by the base system
and making things dependent on a package, something for which there's
not even a support framework (e.g. you *can't* depend on a port or
package from the base system), simply would not work.  Here's a list
of the utilities/libs which currently rely on perl being present to
either build at all or not fall over at run time:

/usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/cvs
/usr/src/secure/lib/libdes
/usr/src/sys/pci/locate.pl
/usr/src/usr.bin/killall
/usr/src/usr.bin/sgmlfmt
/usr/src/usr.bin/sgmls
/usr/src/usr.bin/which
/usr/src/usr.sbin/kbdmap
/usr/src/usr.sbin/spkrtest
/usr/src/usr.sbin/tzsetup
/usr/src/usr.sbin/xntpd

> perl by hand in order to eliminate an abhorrent redundancy.  Would you
> require that XF86 be bundled as well?  Mi genoito!

Of course not, it's not required for anything.  Perl is.  Case
dismissed.

					Jordan