Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 21:03:17 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org> Cc: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The future of perl on FreeBSD Message-ID: <p05111757b8ff754e754e@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <xzpsn52nv0e.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> References: <20020508075543.A5E5838CC@overcee.wemm.org> <xzpsn52nv0e.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
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At 12:18 AM +0200 5/9/02, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: >Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org> writes: > > We have several choices.. From installing a symlink > > pointing to wherever the default perl package is, > > through to a simple redirector that searches > > $PATH and/or looks in a few well-known locations. > >As previously posted... Here at RPI, we do something similar to this for some of the interpretters we provide (both for shells and things like perl). Our redirector-program is about 600 lines, but some of that is to handle multi-platform issues, and some of the rest is probably overkill. Still, you probably want a more complicated re-direction program than the one you posted. People will invoke a script by invoking the script (okay, that sounds stupid, but...), not by making sure their PATH has the right perl in it. People might fully-specify the script to run, and still have unintended consequences because there is some other program named 'perl' somewhere in their path. In many situations this is not an issue, but at other times it can open some subtle security issues. One of the nice things about using a redirector program, though, is that it also allows the user a way to set which version of perl they want to use, even if multiple copies of perl are installed, and they can do it on a session-by- session basis. That's the reason we did it at RPI. The idea has proved to be very useful over the past nine years. The code we still use at RPI would be a mess to use for this freebsd idea, but I could write up something halfway between DES's example and RPI's code if people would be curious to see it. But I don't know if we want to start yet another bikeshed if we haven't finished the last one... -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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