On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Tom Christiansen wrote:
> >it can be used for system specific @INC paths without
> >recompiling perl
>
> That's what PERL5LIB is for.
PERL5LIB is available for the individual user to use, set, unset, change,
etc., at will. As sysadmin, you can't set it in /etc/profile and be sure
that your setting will stick.
Actually, you can't even guarantee that every process will be run
under a shell that sources /etc/profile or indeed under a "shell" that
sources any configuration file at all under /etc.
Even if you could, however, there's still a maintenance issue. For
"configuring" one package, perl, does it really make administrative sense
to have to maintain N /etc/*profile files (one for each possible shell?)
This would mean that every shell upgrade could potentially require manual
intervention to retain the perl customization.
If (please note I said "If" here--I'm not arguing for or against the
proposal) it would be useful to configure perl, then I strongly would
argue that such configuration ought to be localized to just a very few
files under perl's control.
--
Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Physics
Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042
