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

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 12, 2021, at 13:07, Bill Cole wrote:

> On 2021-06-12 at 12:55:24 UTC-0400 (Sat, 12 Jun 2021 09:55:24 -0700)
> Ken Cunningham is rumored to have said:
> 
>> macports recommended perl is still 5.28
> 
> Which has been unsupported upstream for just over a year.

The point Ken was making is that we select a specific perl (python, php, etc.) version to be the default, both in the portgroups and in default variants of individual ports. The version that is selected is typically the latest stable version at the time the selection is made. Indeed we could and should select a newer version for perl by now, but changing the selection takes effort, so someone will have to expend the effort to make that happen. Typically it has been Mojca who has done this work for previous versions, and she has begun the process of adding p5.32 modules and will presumably move on to p5.34 modules after that, and perhaps after that on to changing the default.


>> $ 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.

It's not odd, in that nothing in MacPorts gets done until someone does it. Nobody has yet added a perl5_32 variant, therefore none exists.

The p5.32 module ports were just added en masse to MacPorts some days ago (some days after you wrote your message). There are so many of them that it will still take many days before the automated build system is finished building them. Until that's done, there's little point to offer a variant for that perl version for the perl5 port.


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

Or indeed any other sufficiently large subset of ports. Many of our maintainers do spend a great deal of time maintaining a great many ports, for which I thank them! :)