Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 12:11:45 +0200 From: Anton Berezin <tobez@tobez.org> To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> Cc: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: Perl version in -STABLE Message-ID: <20030519101145.GD78833@heechee.tobez.org> In-Reply-To: <xzpaddnfhfl.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> References: <xzpy918mk3y.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <20030516001541.U656@znfgre.qbhto.arg> <xzpaddnfhfl.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 10:02:06AM +0200, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: > Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> writes: > > I also think that this change would break faith with those users of > > RELENG_4 that were promised that the perl in that branch would never be > > upgraded. We don't even HAVE a 5.005_03 port, so those who depend on it > > would be left in the dust. > > Those people are better served with running a security branch, where > Perl will never be updated. Personally I agree with one of the opinions in this thread regarding the increasing amount of attention it requires to maintain perl-using ports to work with three different versions of perl (if this is at all possible). I would not like to see the base system perl updated, though. And the reason for that is that to me (some will differ with me here), the winning argument in favor of perl removal from 5.X was that perl's build process does not fit well into FreeBSD's build process and the consequent difficulty of base system perl upgrades. I can see the following alternatives to your suggestion: 1. Do nothing. It *is* likely that the ports will drop 4.X support in three/four months, however long 4.X is going to be with us. In this case we simply won't care. 2. *Remove* perl from 4.X. I could live with that. This will require sysinstall change to install perl package by default. 3. Make lang/perl5* to `use.perl port' automatically on 4.X (it already does that on 5.X). This will also require sysinstall change to install perl package by default. My priorities would be 1, 3, 2, 0, where 0 is your suggestion to update system perl to 5.6. As a side note, I don't really understand how people can use 5.8.0 in production. The inability to manually dispatch pending signals in XS code, combined with the current implementation of reliable signals is a single showstopper. 5.8.1 will fix that, and it is going to happen soon. Cheers, \Anton. -- You shouldn't be intimidated by this issue at all, since Perl is your friend. -- Apache mod_perl guide
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030519101145.GD78833>