perl5, perl5.* changes

[Russell Jones]

From: macports-users-bounces at lists.macosforge.org [macports-users-bounces at lists.macosforge.org] on behalf of Brandon S Allbery KF8NH [allbery.b at gmail.com]
Sent: 03 March 2011 17:32
To: macports-users at lists.macosforge.org
Subject: Re: perl5, perl5.* changes

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On 3/3/11 03:45 , Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2011-03-01 16:50:53 +0000, Eric Hall wrote:
>>      I'm quite clear on the need for multiple versions of perl.
>> For one, I use several perl versions for what I do.  IIRC the ghc port
>> requires perl5.8 for its configuration, newer versions of perl
>> don't work (this may have changed, though I see ghc still depends
>> on perl5.8).  There may be additional reasons to maintain several
>> perl versions.
>
> Debian has perl 5.10 (5.12 is in experimental for the moment) and ghc.
> So, ghc should work with perl 5.10 (and in such a case, I don't see
> why it wouldn't work with perl 5.12).

The version issue was that the old code generator made use of a rather nasty
Perl script (commonly known as the Evil Mangler) to peephole optimize gas
output for the STG, and that script breaks on Perl > 5.8.x.  In recent GHC
versions, this code generator (-fvia-C) is strongly deprecated but still
present; it is likely to be removed in GHC 7.2.

In short, it would be best to leave it dependent on perl5.8 for people who
need to use -fvia-C.

- --
brandon s. allbery     [linux,solaris,freebsd,perl]    allbery.b at gmail.com
system administrator  [openafs,heimdal,too many hats]                kf8nh
---------------------------

Would this not be better dealt with by having a +viac (or whatever name) variant that causes the port to depend on perl5.8? It'd be something like

variant viac requires perl-5.8 {
    depends-append              port:perl-5.8
}

in the ghc portfile, wouldn't it?

Russell