[MacPorts] #50062: Please restore the ability to install stable Perl versions from 5.8 onward.

[David Evans]

On 12/22/15 10:46 AM, Felipe Gasper wrote:
> How about just removing the modules and just leaving the interpreter, then, along with associated scripts like “cpan”?
> That will allow for quick and easy (re-)installation of modules.
> 
> I myself keep the multiple Perl interpreters around more to compare core features in the language than anything else.
> 
> -FG

There's not much hope at this point for the official restoration of these older perl ports.  After much discussion on
the various lists, the process to remove them began over a year ago.  Support for non-core Perl modules for these ports
was discontinued in January of 2015. Removal of support for perl variants +perl5_8, +perl5_10, +perl5_12, +perl5_14
began in February and has been ongoing throughout this year.  It's only this month that the perl interpreters themselves
were finally retired. No current ports depend upon them.

The current plan is to continue this effort with a target to remove support for perl5.16 perl5.18 perl5.20 as soon as
current dependencies can be removed and only provide support for the current stable version of perl from that point forward.

It would take a major outpouring of demand for the old multiple perl version system and a corresponding major offering
of manpower to maintain it to change this plan.  Realistically, I don't see this happening.

For users who would like to checkout svn versions of these, now officially discontinued, perl versions (perl5.8 perl5.10
perl5.12 perl5.14) for their own use, without any warranty or support, see "How to install an older version of a port".

https://trac.macports.org/wiki/howto/InstallingOlderPort#Howtoinstallanolderversionofaport.

Again, the most recent svn revision before they were removed was r131310.

> 
> On 22 Dec 2015 8:31 AM, MacPorts wrote:
>> #50062: perl5.22 does not “replace” perl5.14!!
>> -----------------------------+--------------------------------
>>    Reporter:  felipe@…        |      Owner:  macports-tickets@…
>>        Type:  enhancement     |     Status:  closed
>>    Priority:  Normal          |  Milestone:
>>   Component:  ports           |    Version:
>> Resolution:  wontfix         |   Keywords:
>>        Port:  perl5 perl5.14  |
>> -----------------------------+--------------------------------
>>
>> Comment (by mojca@…):
>>
>>   Just a (not-so)short reply.
>>
>>   There is/was no technical problem or reason for removal of these ports.
>>   The only maintenance problem was keeping all the modules. Keeping just the
>>   interpreter wasn't really problematic (even though it make Perl less
>>   usable without those modules).
>>
>>   We ship many other software packages that only come at a fixed version and
>>   get updated on a regular basis, so that there is no way of going back. You
>>   can't compile your documents with TeX Live 2012, even though that might
>>   give you different result from TeX Live 2015 for example. You cannot
>>   switch to an older version of `libpng`, `subversion` (name any other
>>   software for that matter). We also removed `python24`, `python25`,
>>   `python30`, `python31`, ... `clang` up to version 3.2. (On the other hand
>>   we keep `gcc43`, Apache 1 and a zillion of other outdated and unmaintained
>>   packages that nobody even notices are still there and completely broken.)
>>
>>   So at some point certain decisions have to be made: whether or not to keep
>>   an old software around. Keeping an old version of Perl is hardly of
>>   interest to an average user, but I imagine there are developers who might
>>   want to test their packages against different versions of Perl. If nothing
>>   else, if they want to support older versions of (system) Perl on Mac OS X,
>>   it might be handy to be able to test whether something works or not.
>>
>>   For those users there are currently two options:
>>     * install Perl from a different source (either from source or from a
>>   binary package)
>>     * create a local repository and fetch the old `Portfile`s from MacPorts'
>>   SVN:
>>   {{{
>>   svn co
>>   https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/lang/perl5.14@131310
>>   }}}
>>   (or hypothetically get a vote from more users & developers who would agree
>>   that keeping those old versions around would be beneficial for the
>>   community).
>>
>>   If the ports are of benefit to a single user, it might be best to do a
>>   checkout from SVN. If there is a large group of users who desperately need
>>   these old versions, one could discuss that on the user mailing list.
>>
>>   An alternative would be to create a "graveyard" with outdated ports (such
>>   as Perl 5.8, Apache 1, GCC 4.3, python 2.4, Qt 3, wxWidgets 2.8) that
>>   wouldn't be included in the distribution and wouldn't generally be
>>   maintained, but so that users could easily use them (at their own risk),
>>   in a similar way as HomeBrew provides add-on packages in separate
>>   repositories (scientific package, ...)
>>
> 
>