What's the push to require the latest Perl?

[Bill Cole]

On 8 Jan 2018, at 13:42 (-0500), Daniel J. Luke wrote:

> On Jan 8, 2018, at 1:36 PM, Bill Cole 
> <macportsusers-20171215 at billmail.scconsult.com> wrote:
>> I think a better approach would be to either require the p5-foo port 
>> OR (better) require path:${perl5.lib}/Foo.pm:p5.${perl5.major}-foo or 
>> (best) create a new syntax for dependencies that check for 
>> functionality, i.e. use the return value of 'perl -e "use Foo 6.66;"' 
>> to decide whether to install p5.${perl5.major}-foo @6.66 (or greater)
>
> or most simply:
>
> Provide one version of perl5 (whatever the current released version of 
> perl is). Provide p5-foo ports that build with whatever the current 
> perl5 is. There isn't a good reason to try to support multiple 
> versions of perl5, if we didn't try to do so we could jettison all of 
> this complexity.

An issue with that is the fact that some amount of perl5 code in the 
wild (often including widely-used non-core modules) is broken with each 
major version. This is why upstream maintains 2 major versions at a 
time, releasing a new version every Spring. So if MacPorts supports just 
one version, it would need to be the older supported version for some 
months after the annual release.

-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Currently Seeking Steady Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole