perl5, perl5.* changes

[Dave Aiello]

Arno Hautala <arno <at> alum.wpi.edu> writes:

> I think a cleaner transition would have been to add the 5.8 variant,
> set it as default (essentially no change from the previous behavior),
> and then wait some number of weeks before changing the default variant
> to 5.12. This way, most users would already be on the 5.8 variant and
> would not be affected by the change in defaults.
> 
> Personally, I'm not sure I'm ready to move to 5.12 (I need to
> recompile all my installed p5 modules and test a few scripts), so I've
> resolved things on my side by correcting my "broken" perl5 install
> with perl5+perl5_8.
> 
> At least, that's my take.
> 

I ran into this problem with upgrading my installed packages.  I had
previously been running Perl 5.8.  I ended up with Perl 5.12 which
doesn't interoperate well will some of the software I use everyday.

I started trying to revert back to Perl 5.8, was completely stumped by
the process, and uninstalled quite a large number of ports to get back
to no Perl from MacPorts at all.

I started trying to install Perl 5.8 by "perl5 +perl5_8", and here were
my results:

bash-3.2# port install perl5 +perl5_8
--->  Computing dependencies for perl5
--->  Fetching perl5
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for perl5
--->  Extracting perl5
--->  Configuring perl5
--->  Building perl5
--->  Staging perl5 into destroot
--->  Installing perl5 @5.12.3_1+perl5_8
--->  Activating perl5 @5.12.3_1+perl5_8
--->  Cleaning perl5

Why am I getting Perl 5.12.3_1 when I clearly want Perl 5.8?

--Dave Aiello