Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 11:30:32 +0300 From: Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il> To: allenc@verinet.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Perl5 installation Message-ID: <33ACE2A8.3363@barcode.co.il> References: <33ACC087.7CD6@verinet.com>
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Allen Campbell wrote: > > I am building my first (of many I hope) FreeBSD server. I installed the > Perl5 package (Perl v5.003) after installing the FreeBSD v2.2.2 > distribution. I assumed that the Perl5 package installation would > replace the Perl4 binary in /usr/bin. It did not, and this leads me to > the following questions; > > Should a symlink be put in place of the Perl4 binary in /usr/bin? Are > there perl4 resources that are installed with the base distribution that > should be removed? > > That fact that the Perl5 package did not overwrite the perl4 binary > implies that perl4 should not be tampered with. I am familiar enough > with Perl to know that Perl5 is backwardly compatible, but this is not > perfect. Are there perl4 dependent scripts present on the system that > would cause me to want to preserve perl4? > > Thanks for helping a neophyte FreeBSD hack. The reason perl5 didn't replace the /usr/bin/perl binary is because that's what /usr/local/bin is for - that's where binaries that are not part of the base OS go. On the other hand, I've found very little reason to use perl4. What I usually do is rename /usr/bin/perl to /usr/bin/perl4 (just in case) and then make /usr/bin/perl a symlink to the binary in /usr/local/bin. Most scripts should not notice the difference, though there are exceptions. If you see a sctipt complaining about @ requiring a \, or some other perl5 backward incompatibility, just change it to use perl4. One thing to note if you do take this approach: When upgrading, the upgrade procedure will overwrite your symlink in /usr/bin with a new perl4 binary, so this procedure must be repeated each time you upgrade the OS. Nadav
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