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

[Bradley Giesbrecht]

On May 28, 2012, at 1:15 AM, Bjarne D Mathiesen wrote:

> Bradley Giesbrecht wrote:
>> 
>> I will submit a new patch replacing ${perl5.major} with p5.14.
>> 
> 
> And I do know that using ${perl5.major} makes their builds unrepeatable
> according to some, but it only breaks if you switch version in perl5 -
> otherwise you'll get the same each and every time you build.

We agree that switching the per5 version using the perl5 PortGroup variable ${perl5.major} for dependency selection will cause ports to build differently. It is MacPorts policy to avoid this situation.

> So we are at present stuck with three unpalatable situations :
> 1) using ${perl5.major} might break things for some people

It has been decided by MacPorts managers that ${perl5.major} as currently defined in the perl5 PortGroup is not an acceptable variable for selecting dependencies.

> 2) using a static version makes up/down-grading a PITA

I suspect the market for up/down-grading perl is very small. There has been some agreement that upgrading to a more current stable release (5.14 has been proposed) is desirable.

For adding support for multiple versions of perl the suggestion is to add variants or subports. This fits how MacPorts handles multiple version support for other ports like python.

> 3) hard to take decisions on when to upgrade the 5-<extensions>

Variants and subports would make this easier in the future. There would be little/no resistance for adding a variant or subport for a newer perl.


The current perl5.12 ports work well for me so I will leave further discussion on this subject to those with better ideas and more passion for perl then I.


Regards,
Bradley Giesbrecht (pixilla)

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