Re: blaming perl for not using a build policy

[sasdrtx]

Building one's own Perl installation may be the best practice, and maybe all hard-code monks do that. But for those of us of the unwashed masses, that's too much trouble.

Most programmers don't want to deal with system issues; that's one of the reasons for getting a Linux distro you like; so you don't have to compile everything yourself.

If your code is going to be distributed widely, then you have little control over what Perl is going to be running it anyway.

I think the article's author has a good point... Redhat is undoubtedly doing some damage to Perl because they are distributing a bad version of Perl. I agree that one should expect their distribution to contain a non-broken and performant copy of Perl.

[syphilis]

But for those of us of the unwashed masses, that's too much trouble

It's ok to use the vendor-supplied perl, but (imho) if you do that, it's unreasonable of you to then complain about its shortcomings.

Cheers,
Rob

[Mutant]

It all comes down to why we've ended up with this version of Perl being distributed by RH. If they had legitmate reasons for compiling it in that way, then I guess it's fair enough. If it's an error on their part, then it's something they should fix immediately.

That said, even if they did have specific reasons for breaking Perl for everyone else, then maybe they should've shipped with 2 versions of Perl, one used by their code, and one for general use.

I can't really accept that a barrier to using Perl should be that you have to compile it yourself. Are we trying to drive people away deliberately? How successful would Linux be if everyone had to compile their own kernel (even for commercial use)?