Multiple versions

[Duncan Hutty]

If a port is set up such that multiple versions can be installed, the 
binaries are named with a suffix such as <binary>-<version> (perl-5.10) 
or <binary><version> (psql83).

If I want to indicate a default version I can make a link:
ln -s /opt/local/bin/perl-5.10 /opt/local/bin/perl

That way if my path has /opt/local/bin at the beginning, I can run perl 
scripts with system perl using ./script.pl and with macports's perl-5.10 
by using perl script.pl.

However, many ports, including perl, come with many binaries so making 
appropriate links by hand would be tedious. How do macports users 
normally get around this? Do people write scripts to make links 
automatically for every binary that has a suffix? Does macports have 
some feature that I am unaware of that makes this problem go away, 
perhaps by setting an option at installation time to specify no suffix?

Duncan Hutty