changing default perl

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 3, 2013, at 16:07, Mark Anderson wrote:

> I like the idea of a port select like python, which as worked well for me. With python, in most cases, I can just keep the most current 2.x and most current 3.x. I'm not sure if python just works better, and we need to mirror that approach, or there is something else at play.

perl5 currently does mirror the python and php approaches, more or less, with the exception that we didn’t have “port select” when the current perl5 ports were designed, so we don’t have that yet.


> What really drives me crazy is that Macports continually insists on installing perl 5.12 which is 3+ years old. If there were specific port related reasons, I would be less upset, but in most cases, I can uninstall or stop the perl5.12 install, changed the dependence in the portfile to 5.18 locally and everything works just fine. 

Why does it matter what ports MacPorts installs for its own purposes? It doesn’t prevent you from installing whatever ports you want for your purposes. Do you also complain when MacPorts installs autoconf or gettext just because you don’t personally need to use those ports directly?


> I lean toward a port select idea, where we can limited the number of installed Perls to ones we want or have a real need to keep. Perl should play nice with other installed Perls, so I'm not against offering a few versions back and maybe the latest current unstable odd numbered perl like 5.19. At this point we can probably ditch perl 5.8 and maybe 5.10 to make things easier.

Remember that “port select” is for your convenience as a user. Ports should not use what you have selected. Ports should continue to declare dependencies on the specific ports they need.