Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 12:20:41 +0200 From: Anton Berezin <tobez@FreeBSD.org> To: Joerg Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Cc: sheldonh@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/perl pathnames.h perl.c Message-ID: <20020822102041.GF5446@heechee.tobez.org> In-Reply-To: <20020822112151.A17650@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <200208212054.g7LKsja8062092@freefall.freebsd.org> <20020822083848.GJ71936@starjuice.net> <20020822112151.A17650@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 11:21:51AM +0200, Joerg Wunsch wrote: > As Sheldon Hearn wrote: > > > Does the continued maintenance of this utility mean that those of us > > who objected to its existence have lost, or is it still just an interim > > solution that might not exist in 5.0-RELEASE? > > Since i don't know who objected and with which arguments they > did, i cannot say. ;-) > > Anyway, upon seeing the current /usr/bin/perl, i thought it to > be a Good Idea. Since virtually all Unix-like operating systems > these days (with FreeBSD being the exception now) ship Perl as > /usr/bin/perl, it makes the script well portable to have a > redirector there. We've got so many other redirectors (MTA, > binutils -> ELF/COFF etc.), why not keep /usr/bin/perl as well? I think it can be safely removed after certain modifications are made to the use.perl utility. The ultimate goal is to be able to install several different perls that do not conflict with each other (this is not the case now). Please bear with me until I get this done. Oh yeah, and DES told me some time ago on IRC that he would not care if the wrapper is removed, so we are (hopefully) not stepping on anyone's toes here. In short, to reiterate why I and some others think that the wrapper is not such a great idea: o for scripts there is a difference between no /usr/bin/perl and /usr/bin/perl that does not work. Printing a message is only good for an operator. o the `user should be told where to find perl' argument is bogus, since for those users who are not smart enough to figure that out perl package would be installed by default; this package is too useful to not be installed by default, anyway. o the wrapper is an extra entity which is not needed (Occam's razor). It basically does nothing that cannot be achieved by creative symlink manipulation, which use.perl does and has to do anyway. There might be some other arguments which I don't remember. Cheers, =Anton. -- | Anton Berezin | FreeBSD: The power to serve | | catpipe Systems ApS _ _ |_ | http://www.FreeBSD.org | | tobez@catpipe.net (_(_|| | tobez@FreeBSD.org | | +45 7021 0050 | Private: tobez@tobez.org | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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