changing default perl

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 3, 2013, at 16:44, Clemens Lang wrote:

> To be honest, I don't know why we've ever diverged from this strategy.
> We're in a habit of shipping the latest and greatest version of software
> for most ports we have, sometimes even if breaks dependents (in which
> case we try to fix the dependents or get upstream to fix them for us).
> Maybe somebody who has seen the transition back then can comment on
> that?

Actually here’s the ticket from 5 years ago that willed the perl5 metaport into existence, along with some discussion about whether it would be nicer to just have a single perl:

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/16830

Note that the perl5.8 port has been around practically forever—11 years—and was the first language port added to MacPorts, just two months after the first commit ever to the MacPorts repository was made:

https://trac.macports.org/changeset/826

Don’t know if there was any serious thought given at the time to parallel versions of perl.