Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 23:44:45 -0600 (CST) From: Gary Clark II <gclarkii@main.gbdata.com> To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Cc: roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do! Message-ID: <199611200544.XAA19148@main.gbdata.com> In-Reply-To: <199611192100.OAA09524@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Nov 19, 96 02:00:19 pm"
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Terry Lambert wrote: > > > FreeBSD. People are *always* complaining "why don't you upgrade your > > > PERL?", even when it it well known that an upgrade frequently requires > > > updating all of the PERL-dependent scripts to the new syntax, since > > > the syntax is not sufficiently stable. > > > > Between Perl4 and Perl5, the changes are documented in perltrap. Between > > 5.x there have been very few syntaxic changes. You won't notice many > > changes between 5.003 and 5.004 in that respect. The only major change that hit people was that the @ was no longer escaped by default. > > I realize this. However, it requires going over your existing PERL > code to make sure it doesn't break from the syntactical changes. Takes very little time. Just like taking a C program to C++. > > The problem is the dependencies for the existing code, and that fact > that if the maintainers of the code haven't "upgraded", then we become > promary support for the "upgraded" scripts. Most programs run fine with NO changes. > > This would have been less of a problem in the 5.x changeover if the > PERL distribution had a tool to upgrade scripts over the syntactic > changes. Why don't C++ compliers supply the same thing? I've seen programmers get bit by the same thing. > > > > > For FreeBSD, the biggest problem is PERL dependent ports and MajorDomo; > > > PERL upgrades have been delayed for MajorDomo more than once in the > > > past. > > > > Majordomo has been Perl5 compatible as of 1.93. 1.94 runs fine under it. > > What was the delay between when people started saying we should upgrade > to PERL 5.x and the release of MajorDomo 1.93? > > The problem, again, is that the change cycle on PERL has historically > been too short to base a FreeBSD release on a PERL release... PERL > is moving faster than FreeBSD, in other words. HuH???!!!??? > Terry Lambert > terry@lambert.org Gary -- Gary Clark II (N5VMF) | I speak only for myself and "maybe" my company gclarkii@GBData.COM | Member of the FreeBSD Doc Team Providing Internet and ISP startups mail info@GBData.COM for information FreeBSD FAQ at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/docs/freebsd-faq.ascii
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