[HEADS UP] perl symlinks in /usr/bin will be gone

[Chuck Swiger]

Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 30, 2005 at 05:31:21AM -0500, Chuck Swiger wrote:
>>I do want scripts to use a portable mechanism to invoke Perl regardless of 
>>where the binary happens to be found, but if people are determined to do 
>>otherwise, well, that's up to them.  One solution for those people might be 
>>to install the Perl port with a $PREFIX of /usr rather than /usr/local.
> 
> And I want a pony :-)

I don't expect to get what I want, either. :-)

> In other words, it's an impossible dream to hope that all scripts will
> conform to this or any of the other possible choices (remember the
> perl motto).  Even making everything perl in the ports collection use
> a uniform style is probably an infeasible task (recall 840 ports use
> /usr/bin/perl, and that's not counting the others that use another
> hardcoded variant of /usr/local/bin/perl).

Good word, that.  It is infeasible to get hundreds of people to all follow a 
convention-- any convention, no matter how simple and reasonable-- simply by 
wishing for it.  Since a perfect solution does not exist, it is fortunate that 
we don't actually need one: just something that is good enough for now, for 
the present tasks.

The Perl software I actually use either works fine regardless of whether perl 
is in /usr/bin, /sw/bin, /opt/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/pkg/bin, or who knows 
where else, or else I fix it to suit my requirements when I notice a problem.

-- 
-Chuck