From owner-freebsd-current  Thu May  9  2:35:16 2002
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To: current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Resolution (Was: Re: The future of perl on FreeBSD)
References: <200205072241.g47Mf0jV002339@grimreaper.grondar.org> 
In-Reply-To: <200205072241.g47Mf0jV002339@grimreaper.grondar.org> ; from Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>  "Tue, 07 May 2002 23:41:00 BST."
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:31:42 +0100
From: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
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Hello all

Thanks to all participants in this thread, the way ahead is now
abundantly clear. :-)

There were three options, listed below and trimmed:

> 1) leave perl in the base OS and deal with the library bloat.

> 2) split perl down to base language/interpreter for OS use, and
>    make the libraries a port.

> 3) Ditch perl from the base system completely, and rely on the
>    ports system for FreeBSD's perl requirements.

Option 1 got extremely limited support.

Option 2 got some support (and for the record it was my choice).

Option 3 got pretty overwhelming support.

So it looks like FreeBSD gets to ditch perl from the OS. I will do this.

There are some issues to deal with.

1) There are some perl scripts in the base OS that need to be either
   ditched or rewritten.

2) The exact method of providing perl to the user base needs to be
   rounded off. Here are some suggestions for this:
   a) Rely entirely on the port and leave it at that.
   b) Install the port at install time in a similar way to the
      way we currently install XFree86.
   c) Install a wrapper in /usr/bin/perl that runs the real
      perl from whereever it is.

3) Fix the ports system such that USE_PERL makes an appropriate
   dependancy on the perl port, and does not assume perl in the
   base OS.

4) Fix ports that do things like "perl -spi -e '<script>' <files>"
   to use whatever comes out of the current "sed -[Ii]" discussion
   instead.

Any _strong_ feelings on any of these? Any volunteers?

M
-- 
o       Mark Murray
\_
O.\_    Warning: this .sig is umop ap!sdn

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