Vincent D Murphy wrote:
>
> overall i feel a bit let down by apple's integration of perl. i guess i
> was expecting too much; while the perl supplied works as advertised, i
> have always regarded perl as a 'living' piece of software which i like
> to keep upgraded. i have also felt that it's my duty to run the latest
> version so that perhaps i will find a bug or other problem that no one
> else has. that is also why i run parrot, incidentally; even if i really
> only run make test (for now).
It can be 'living' but it is up to you to breathe life into it.
Apple is no worse than any of the commercial UNIX vendors w.r.t. how
current their OS included perl is. AIX 4.3.3 is loaded with 5.6.0. HP-UX
11.1 shipped with 5.005 (10.2 which is still widely deployed/used came with
4.004!). Given that these OS's don't have available a "free" C/C++
compiler, I'd say Apple hasn't done too badly.
If you want to be bleeding edge, you need to assume the burden of
integration. Personally I don't intend to upgrade my production systems to
5.8.0 anytime soon. I'll wait for 5.8.1. If I needed to move quickly to
5.8.0 or be better poised for 6, I'd use a development box and assume there
would be a fair amount of pain along the way.
