As of perl-5.35.11, perl offers a configuration option,
'-Utaint_support', which enables a user to build a perl executable
without taint support. Neil Bowers contacted me with a pull request for
a CPAN distribution that I co-maintain, IPC-System-Simple
(https://github.com/pjf/ipc-system-simple/pull/39). The purpose of the
p.r. was to enable certain test files to PASS if the user attempted to
install this distro against a "no-taint perl."
This p.r. exposed some problems with the distribution which I haven't
fully resolved but which are probably not perl-5.35.11's problem.
Nonetheless, the fact that Neil is having to work through the "CPAN
River" to create patches for multiple CPAN distros to accommodate
no-taint support suggests that we may need, starting now, to extensively
test distros against perls built with -Utaint_support.
I myself don't do fully automated CPANtesting of the kind that Andreas,
Slaven, Bingos, Carlos and others so unflaggingly do. So I don't know
how much of a human and electronic work burden this might be. I'm
posting here to initiate a discussion.
Thank you very much.
Jim Keenan
