perl and python version update

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Jun 1, 2021, at 4:25 PM, Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com> wrote:
>> is there any overall strategy regarding the update of perl and python version as dependencies?
>> 
> The basic idea was to be rational about things, so that end-users don’t need many different perls and pythons installed just because, for example, someone noticed a new perl came out last Tuesday and so changed their ports to that.
> 
> The admins would set the “recommended” perl and python based on updates and software conformance, and all ports would try to use that (unless some given version would be the only version that would work).
> 
> And then, en-masse, at the right moment the “recommended” version would change, all the ports would more-or-less move to the new default at once, if we could.
> 
> How well this is working, whether it is working at all, and how well it is or is not generally supported by the group I could not say.
> 
> But it seemed like a good idea, when for example one needed to build and install two or three perls and two or three pythons just to install git.

For perl, we should just ship one perl as 'perl5' and have everything depend on it (and revbump the world of perl when we upgrade it). It takes us too long to migrate everything 'nicely'

I suspect we could do this for python as well, but I've not looked recently at how disruptive newer python versions are.

... but I've said it before and people don't really like that idea, I guess :)

-- 
Daniel J. Luke