Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 11:08:21 +0000 From: nik@blueberry.co.uk (Nik Clayton) To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: davidn@sdev.usn.blaze.net.au (David Nugent), msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, terry@lambert.org, roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do! Message-ID: <Mutt.19961121110821.nik@blueberry.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <199611210427.OAA11100@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>; from Michael Smith on Nov 21, 1996 14:57:16 %2B1030 References: <Mutt.19961121150743.davidn@sdev> <199611210427.OAA11100@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Michael Smith writes:
> I'm entirely in agreement with the basic principle, but I strongly
> believe that we need to incorporate mature and ubiquitous tools in
> as seamless and standard a fashion as possible.
Uh, /usr/ports? pkg_add?
As far as I can see, FreeBSD currently has a few admin scripts written in
Perl (which someone in this thread has already volunteered to re-write
in C). And that's about the extent of it's requirement at the moment.
If J. Random User wants to write a nifty adduser script (or whatever) in
Perl, then great. Even better, encourage them to submit it as a port
with a dependency on a particular Perl port.
Or punt Perl (and other niceties) into a 'recommended' distribution (or
something) and have the install say something like
If you're new to Unix then you may want to look at the
'recommended-software' distribution. This is a collection of
software pre-compiled that you will probably find immediately
useful.
Perl 5.00x
Apache 1.1.1
Elm (or Pine, or whatever)
Adduser
[and so on]
If you're more skilled with Unix, you may want to compile these
programs yourself, using the 'ports' system.
And if you really know what you're doing, you're probably already
running 'ncftp ftp.perl.com/perl/latest.tar.gz' over in another
virtual terminal.
And then you could just have a single port that consists of just a man
page and a bunch of dependencies on the other ports (as listed above).
This man page describes the contents of the 'recommended' distribution,
with pointers on how to get more information about it.
Recommended(1) FreeBSD Reference Manual Recommended(1)
NAME
/usr/bin/perl - The Perl programming language
/usr/libexec/apache - The Apache web server
/usr/sbin/adduser - An easy way to add new users to the system
. . .
DESCRIPTION
Perl
Larry Wall's ubiquitous programming language. Great for scripts
that handle lots of text, and often used in CGI programs for web
pages.
% man perl
for more information.
Apache
Probably the best known free web server, with performance to match
the best of the commercial servers.
See the documentation in /usr/local/share/apache/doc.
Adduser
An interactive script for adding new users to the system. Written
in Perl. Reading the script can be useful as an inkling to the
power of Perl.
% man adduser
for more information.
. . .
and so on.
Create a ports/recommended (or something) category into which stable versions
of software go. ports/lang/perl might be at version 5.4 (fictitious example)
but ports/recommended/perl stays at version 5.003 (or whatever) until
everything else that depends on perl in the 'recommended' category has been
re-written to work with the new version (assuming any re-writing is
necessary).
Thoughts.
N
--
--+=[ Blueberry Hill Blueberry New Media ]=+--
--+=[ http://www.blueberry.co.uk/ 1/9 Chelsea Harbour Design Centre, ]=+--
--+=[ WebMaster@blueberry.co.uk London, England, SW10 0XE ]=+--
--+=[ Ten-Thousand-Dimensional Web in Heaven and Net on Earth ]ENTP
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Mutt.19961121110821.nik>