RFC: changing default perl to perl5.14

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 16, 2012, at 17:42, Dan Ports wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 07:35:10PM +0000, Eric Hall wrote:
>> 	I think it's high (well past, very much so, etc.) time
>> to move perl5 to perl5.14.  If anyone has a reason *not* to
>> do so, please let me know by the end of this week (20Jan2012).
> 
> I certainly don't object to the idea, but I'm wondering about the
> practical aspects...
> 
> My experience with trying to install multiple or non-default perl
> versions hasn't gone well, and I imagine we could easily see
> some of the same problems here.

There should be no problem installing "secondary perls" in addition to the ones ports use. You should be able to use these other perl versions as desired; MacPorts itself wouldn't use them.


> It seems like if we change the default perl version, users are likely
> to wind up with a mix of perl 5.12 and 5.14 modules installed -- both
> from the modules they had installed before,

Sure. That shouldn't be a problem. Users are free to uninstall those ports they no longer need.

> and because there are
> plenty of ports that depend on perl 5.12 specifically.

I assumed Eric's proposal was that he would change all these dependencies to the 5.14 versions.

> If so, we're in
> trouble, because most p5.12-* ports conflict with their p5.14-*
> counterparts.


They should not conflict. That's the whole reason they're subports. Which ones have you found that conflict? We need to fix them. File bug reports.