version of perl dependency

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 22, 2008, at 17:08, Moshe Kamensky wrote:

> * Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> [22/11/08 15:54]:
>>
>> On Nov 22, 2008, at 10:10, Altoine Barker wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 8:03 PM, Moshe Kamensky wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is there a standard way to make applications that depend on perl  
>>>> depend
>>>> on perl 5.10, rather than perl 5.8? Currently I'm just blindly  
>>>> replacing
>>>> all occurrences of 'port:perl5.8' with 'port:perl5.10' in all  
>>>> Portfiles,
>>>> but I think it's a bit unsafe.
>>>
>>> I think the best solution would be to create a variant, unless  
>>> you are
>>> referring to ports that depend on perl as a build dependency?
>>
>> No variant, please; not for this. As was already said, just  
>> declare the
>> dependency on perl as "path:bin/perl:perl5". That's the new style  
>> we're
>> trying to switch all perl-depending ports to. See:
>>
>> http://trac.macports.org/ticket/16830
>
> I don't understand --- this seems to entail changing the Portfiles as
> well (which I was trying to avoid). I was hoping there was some way to
> do this by changing the configuration files

Yes, the ports must be changed. Anytime you have multiple ports that  
should be allowed to satisfy a dependency (in this case, perl5,  
perl5.8 or perl5.10) the dependency cannot be declared using the  
port:-style and should be declared using the path:-style instead. Or,  
if you also want to allow the system perl (the one that comes with  
Mac OS X) to satisfy the dependency, then you should use the bin:-style.