From owner-freebsd-stable Sun Sep 13 10:01:02 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA19690 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:01:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from phoenix.volant.org (phoenix.volant.org [205.179.79.193]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA19671; Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:01:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from patl@phoenix.volant.org) From: patl@phoenix.volant.org Received: from asimov.phoenix.volant.org ([205.179.79.65]) by phoenix.volant.org with smtp (Exim 1.92 #8) id 0zIFW1-0001pu-00; Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:00:45 -0700 Received: from localhost by asimov.phoenix.volant.org (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA28394; Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:00:41 -0700 Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:00:41 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: patl@phoenix.volant.org Subject: Re: Perl version in FreeBSD To: Dean Hollister cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG, FreeBSD Questions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [ WARNING: This thread appears to have been cross-posted to multiple lists ] > Why is perl v4 in the standard FreeBSD release, current and stable > releases? Why can't it be 5.00404 by default? Many packages require perl 5 > to work, so why not make 5.00404 the default... I see that non of the other replies have addressed the original question. You can readily dig through the mailing list archives find the gory details of the previous discussions of this issue; but the condensed version is: 1. Perl5 is not 100% backwards compatible with perl4. It is quite possible that some perl4 scripts will fail if executed by perl5. 2. Perl5 is easily available as a port/package for those who need it. 3. The -stable branch is supposed to be exactly that - stable. Especially as 2.x nears the final release. Upgrading perl would be a gratuitous potentially destabilizing change. There were also some anti-bloat arguments based on the relative sizes of the two installations. Now, 3.0 is a new major version. It is -expected- to include various changes which may break backwards compatability; so it is the ideal point at which to make the upgrade. The theory being that all of the major incompatabilities should be introduced at once, at a major version change. (Hence CAM, ELF, SMP, bind 8, Perl5, etc.). -Pat To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message