Perl error, once and for all

[Scott Haneda]

On Feb 25, 2009, at 9:51 PM, Eric Hall wrote:
>> That feels dirty to me, why not just -f all p5 installs then?  If  
>> that
>> is the real solution, why not have ports look for p5 and auto add  
>> the -
>> f?  I am sure this is a bad idea, but if this is the norm, users are
>> more or less going to do this anyway.  What are the risks?
>>
>>> Really, the port should output a note letting you know that you need
>>> to do this (and/or we should just decide to order @INC like freebsd
>>> ports does so that we don't have to deal with it any more.).
>
> 	Yes, and this is going to happen... RSN.
>
> 	For some (if not all) of the p5-* ports that have recently
> sprouted problems, its the man pages that are the issue, not the
> modules themselves.  I haven't had a chance to look into what
> can be done to avoid the man page collisions.
> 	Forcing the install with -f isn't the right solution.
> It "works" as a band-aid for now, but its not a good thing.


How can you tell it is a man page collision?  Here is a pretty  
consistant error I see:
Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/ 
lib/perl5/5.8.9/Test/Builder/Module.pm is being used by the active  
perl5.8 port. Please deactivate this port first, or use the -f flag to  
force the activation.

Some, yes, I see man pages, and I feel a lot better about -f'ing  
them.  This one, I just braved it, and did not know the repercussions.

Is this saying, the new port I am installing, has in it "Module.pm",  
and is trying to write over /opt/local/lib/perl5/5.8.9/Test/Builder/ 
Module.pm ?  If that is the case, would it not be acceptable to  
version check the to be installed, against the already installed.  If  
they are equal, move on, that is graceful.

If they are not equal, I am not sure what to do, logically, you could  
ask the user to figure it out, that seems half baked.  Picking the  
newest version seems dangerous.  Leaving it alone, seems problematic.   
Installing it elsewhere, and hooking your currently installed port  
into it would be acceptable, if that is even possible.

I do not know enough about how perl works to understand this yet.
--
Scott

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