changing default perl

[Mark Anderson]

Well, I don't really care, but I'm not sure if this is changed, but with
python I see a lot of variants that let me pick the python to support
rather than just pick say +perl. Because there is a lot of just +perl out
there, I get into a mix and match problem.

For example: GraphViz is against perl5.14, Subversion is against perl5.16
and thus I can't use them together. It's the bindings that I really care
about. I'm pulling that out of thin air right now, but I have run into this
problem more than once.

—Mark
_______________________
Mark E. Anderson <emer at emer.net>


On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org>wrote:

>
> 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.
>
>
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