What have I forgotten about specifying which Perl should be /opt/local/bin/perl?

[Gabriel Rosenkoetter]

On 2022-01-21 05:21 EST, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> As was already mentioned, the /opt/local/bin/perl symlink is controlled by the perl5 port, so install it with whatever variant you wish.

I had to glance back and forth a couple times there. I… guess you're 
also "Kastus Shchuka"? :^>

Yes, that was exactly the syntax I didn't remember and couldn't recall 
enough of to locate in the man page. Thank you!

> Unlike most of the other ports like python, php, ruby, and others where you have a choice of version, the perl ports do not use the select mechanism. Modifying them to use the select mechanism (and more specifically modifying every port that currently depends on port:perl5 or path:bin/perl:perl5 to use a specific version of perl) would be a large undertaking, and I'm not sure the benefit would outweigh the drawbacks and the effort involved.
> 
> https://trac.macports.org/ticket/29763

Oh, for sure!

I'm… also not sure it's even actually a good idea, since, in my 
experience, Perl is much more flexible about newer versions of `perl` 
functioning with "out-dated" versions of libraries *and* vice versa 
than, say, PHP is. (I think maybe Python plays better with 
date-of-release mismatches?)

Ahem: Perl is more flexible, so having more than one version (including 
whatever Apple deigns to stomp all over `/usr/bin/perl` with in any 
given release) around only *really* matters in corner cases, even if you 
take the (questionable: I've made this choice under NetBSD and concluded 
it was probably a mistake) decision to tell all installed versions about 
the others' LIBPATHs (while having each version's CPAN module control 
only its own).

By "flexible", I mean it'll *try*, and well-designed modules will keep 
traversing the library path till they find a version that'll work for 
them, but that takes some gymnastics few modules implement in the real 
world.

But also that trac ticket's been around for 11 years, and has a lot of 
interest, including recently, and I'm currently unemployed. So… hm.

I only skimmed the ticket just now (and will read it in more detail, 
because I'm interested), but do you know of prior embarkations down this 
road?

It is, demonstrably (the responses to that ticket), a UI/UX wart.

(Feel free to reply to this one privately, or to move the discussion 
over to macports-dev, if you think either's more appropriate.)

-- 
Gabriel Rosenkoetter (he/him)
gr at eclipsed.net
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