Why don't p5-* ports mark their dependencies?

[Bill Cole]

On 2021-06-12 at 12:55:24 UTC-0400 (Sat, 12 Jun 2021 09:55:24 -0700)
Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com>
is rumored to have said:

> macports recommended perl is still 5.28

Which has been unsupported upstream for just over a year. 5.30 just fell 
out of support a few weeks ago. They are doing a major release every 
year and only supporting the current and prior stable releases. "Pace" 
is all the rage these days, having supplanted "stability."

I still have stable production on 5.28.3 because of some known issues in 
5.30 and later with code hygiene, but I need to work on those issues so 
a 5.30 test system (and soon 5.32) is necessary for me.


> $ port info perl5
> perl5 @5.28.3 (lang)
> Sub-ports:            perl5.16, perl5.18, perl5.20, perl5.22, 
> perl5.24, perl5.26, perl5.28, perl5.30, perl5.32
> Variants:             perl5_26, [+]perl5_28, perl5_30

Odd that perl5.32 is a sub-port but perl5_32 isn't a variant.

> so that is supposed to be the default perl for everything, until such 
> time as that is changed to perl 5.30.
>
> So if you want perl 5.30 for everything, you will be fighting upstream 
> at every turn.

I see it more as opening a second front downstream of MacPorts in 
alliance with the Perl upstream. :)

Someone could make a full-time+ job of maintaining just the Perl 
packages in MacPorts.

-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire