[enhancement] proposal - make all ports independent of which version of Perl is installed or the major one

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

Bradley Giesbrecht wrote:
> 
> The existing ports that are changed by the patch-perl5.xx.diff patch are hard coded to perl5.12. I incorrectly believed that ${perl5.major} would be a static version (currently 5.12) from the portgroup unless subports were in use, and that when MacPorts changed it's default perl to 5.14 in the perl5 portgroup that these ports would pick up that change.

The whole idea behind using ${perl5.major} in the portfiles is to
1) avoid having to update all the p5-<extension> ports each and
   every time Perl updates to Perl 5.xx
2) allow the person who installs perl to choose which version of Perl 5
   is installed amongst the supported versions
3) people will be able to upgrade/downgrade at their leisure

> 
> Would it be advantageous to have a static default perl version the perl5 portgroup that would allow for advancing the version number in dependents?
> 
> I will submit a new patch replacing ${perl5.major} with p5.14.

This just keeps all of the present disadvantages, and we'll have this
discussion over and over again :
    when should we upgrade to perl5.16 in the p5-<extension> ports
    when should we upgrade to perl5.18 in the p5-<extension> ports
    when should we upgrade to perl5.20 in the p5-<extension> ports
    ... ... ...
and this problem will be raised each and every year as Perl releases a
new version of Perl 5

This is in fact the whole reason this thread started as I wasn't
satisfied with being stuck at Perl 5.12 with no possibility in macports
for upgrading to Perl 5.14 (and now Perl 5.16)

My solution leaves this decision in the hands of the installer.
If one is the most happy with perl5.12, then OK ; if one wants to use
perl5.16 because of the new features in perl5.16 then OK

It takes a script to go from one version of Perl 5 to another, but I've
published that one too.

My solution leaves the decision in the hands of the end-user as to which
version of Perl 5 they want to have as the major one.

> 
> Regards,
> Bradley Giesbrecht (pixilla)

:-)
-- 
Bjarne D Mathiesen
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