perl5, perl5.* changes

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Feb 27, 2011, at 12:57 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> Sure. Are you suggesting that something can/should be done right now to help this?
> 
> One was already suggested: the perl5 port should have added a 5.8 variant that became the default,

you do know that the perl5 port used to be perl5.8 by default and has stayed that way for multiple years before this change was made, right?

... and that continuing to push out perl5.8 as the default is a bad idea

... and that no one came up with a 'smooth' transition plan even though multiple maintainers had asked for input

> Or, perl5 could have become "the" perl port, at whatever version, and all p5-* ports that need rebuilds would have gotten their revisions bumped.

which is what I suggested.

Of course, perl5 used to work (mostly) that way but a lot of effort was put into changing it (so that multiple versions of perl could be installed, I guess).

> There may be other ideas. I have not completely thought through the problem, and don't really have the time or inclination to do so right now.

OK, I'll remember ignore your future posts on the issue, then.

>> There have been discussions of this for quite some time now - it's probably better that we have some pain and get more people on perl5.12 than keep perl5.8 as the 'standard' perl for forever...
> 
> However, I don't want to handle the support consequences of the way this change was done for the next 6-12 months.

You don't appear to be the maintainer of the perl ports...

(note that I'm not either, but I do use them and have followed this issue for a while).

--
Daniel J. Luke                                                                   
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