changing default perl

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 3, 2013, at 14:41, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:

> On Nov 3, 2013, at 15:38, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> Yes, “port select” is the ultimate goal, but since that’s a larger issue that will take time to resolve, adding a variant to the perl5 port is the simple quick fix.
> 
> I’m not sure that making more work is really something we want to do.

Right. But I’m not sure what course of action you’re advocating with that sentence.


> Anything perl5.18 should have a strict dependency on perl5.18 until we get this ridiculousness hammered out.

Yes, but the OP was asking how to make “perl” be “perl5.18”. That’s the kind of thing that “port select” is supposed to be for, except that it would conflict with files from the “perl5” port. I don’t think we can suggest people use “port select” for perl until the old perl5 port and all references to it have been removed.


> Last we discussed, it sounded like even perl_select was not an ultimate solution.

I think it would be a solution, but it would involve the “more work” that you’re not sure we want to do, and I don’t totally disagree; it’s why I didn’t touch the ticket for years either. The “more work” would be finding all ports that depend on perl5 and changing them to either use system perl or a specific MacPorts perl, and then removing the perl5 port.

The other option Daniel advocates is going back to a single perl. That would involve even more work, finding all ports that depend on perl5.x or any p5.x module, changing them to the one true perl, and also rewriting the perl5 portgroup again and all p5 ports and revbumping all of them.

That’s why I proposed the very simple 3-line solution of adding a perl5_18 variant to the perl5 port until we decide which way we want to go.