Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 21:15:03 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Anton Berezin <tobez@FreeBSD.ORG>, Trish Lynch <trish@bsdunix.net> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG, John Hay <jhay@icomtek.csir.co.za>, Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@bsd.hu> Subject: Re: perl wrapper and PATH Message-ID: <p05111735b929a79337b7@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <20020609104850.GC25520@heechee.tobez.org> References: <20020608110834.A25686@dragon.nuxi.com> <20020608141128.D403-100000@femme.listmistress.org> <20020609104850.GC25520@heechee.tobez.org>
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At 12:48 PM +0200 6/9/02, Anton Berezin wrote: >On Sat, Jun 08, 2002 at 02:14:09PM -0400, Trish Lynch wrote: > > > Anton, if you don;t get around to it this weekend, mind > > if I take a stab at it? > >No, I don't mind at all. If only we can agree who does what. :-( RPI has been running with something like the perl wrapper on our systems for many years. It can be very useful, if it's done right. My fear is that everyone is hoping for some quick fix (something as quick as creating a symlink), and does not want to really think about what we want from this wrapper. I would argue we need to stop a minute and think of what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what result we want. We don't have to paint a lot of bikesheds, but we should think it through a bit more than we have so far. We (developers) have decided to make the incompatible system change of removing perl from the base system (a change that I completely agree with). This is an incompatible change, no matter how much we try to lessen the disruption from it. If we want to make this incompatible change on relatively short notice, then we must have a wrapper in /usr/bin/perl which works exactly as /usr/bin/perl worked when it was part of the base OS. We do not want a solution that starts out "users will just have to edit all the perl scripts they've ever done, and change...". That is not user-friendly. We (developers) are making this change, it is our responsibility to make it go smoothly. The perl wrapper should not depend on the setting of PATH. When perl was part of the base OS, then what you got by specifying /usr/bin/perl did not depend on the setting of PATH. The new wrapper should not. We do not know all the environments that all the user-written perl scripts will be running in. I do completely agree that it would be very useful if whatever we did for a wrapper did make it easier to have multiple versions of perl available. In fact, at RPI this is the *main* reason we have a wrapper for perl (and for several other interpretters). I have thoughts on how that version-selection could work, but that debate can wait. The main point I want to make right now is that the initial version of the wrapper should not depend on PATH. It should "just work" when the port is installed, and work in all situations. If 'use.perl port' is required for the wrapper to work in all situations, then the wrapper should say 'Run use.perl port' in addition to saying 'pkg_add -r perl'. I think it would be better if the use.perl step was not required, although obviously that script does need to be smarter in case someone does run it. -- 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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