Re: no more perl in BSD core

[mikfire]

I have followed the thread on the -current mailing list and was, for a while, kind of depressed to see this happening. Then I began thinking about it and I believe this is a Good Thing for several reasons.

As several others have pointed out, the /usr/bin/perl in fbsd has been stuck at 5.005_03 for some time. I like using a more update version, and frequently fought to get 5.6 installed. The fight involved "fixing" the warning that came from trying to install perl as a port, and then fighting to get the modules installed in the right place everytime I went to install one. fbsd's ports system insisted quite heavily on using /usr/bin/perl and I never felt it safe to replace that binary -- it could potentially break an important system utility.

If I gave up and used /usr/bin/perl, every module I loaded would be blown away when I did the next make world. Which meant I had to take a fair amount of time to rebuild/reinstall every perl module I loaded -- and trust me, that was a large number of modules.

Now that perl will be a port again, all of these issues disappear. I can keep up-to-date with the latest version of perl, and modules will not disappear when I make world. Once again, fbsd puts *me* in the driver's seat and lets me choose what gets installed where. That is why I use fbsd.

Merely my 2 cents worth,
mikfire