What's the push to require the latest Perl?

[Bill Cole]

On 9 Jan 2018, at 10:30, Daniel J. Luke wrote:

> On Jan 8, 2018, at 9:46 PM, Bill Cole 
> <macportsusers-20171215 at billmail.scconsult.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> We don't bend over backwards for compatibility with other ports, I 
> don't see why we should treat perl specially in this case.

Seriously?

There are multiple obsolete versions of Python and Ruby actively 
maintained in MacPorts many years after upstream EOL. PHP is a weirder 
case, with php4 still there plus php5 which is "replaced by" php53 
(obsolete) and the main php port having sub-ports in all 4 maintained 
upstream branches as well as 4 others that are long dead. Then there are 
the C/C++ compilers and the databases...

I'm not arguing for supporting every upstream EOL version of everything, 
or even ANY upstream EOL version of ANYTHING, but it's hardly "special" 
to support the 2 upstream-maintained versions of a language.