>On Monday, September 2, 2002, at 08:38 pm, Dan Sugalski wrote: > >Perl's not just an add-on toy here--OS X uses it internally. There >are a variety of scripts in the system and in the installer that use >perl. For them to allow easy install/removal of a core component >would be foolish, since it means things can break that they don't >expect. This sort of stuff has to go through a QA cycle to make sure >things will work right.
The FreeBSD folks decided not to rely on Perl for system installation and system maintenance for the coming FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE : >According to an announcement from FreeBSD developer, Mark Murray, >the FreeBSD 4.x series will continue with its current perl and the >first FreeBSD that won't have perl in its base sources will be >5.0-RELEASE. Perl will continue to be maintained and available via >the ports collection. > >Murray said the decision was based on feedback from other >developers. He said the reasons for removing it include "FreeBSD >cannot afford the time and space to build and maintain it" and >upgrading perl "is a nightmare that regularly breaks upgrades and >cross-builds." > (...) >One issue is that a few base utilities are perl scripts, so these >tools need to be replaced or rewritten (in C, sh, awk, sed, etc.). >Perl is not included in the base install of NetBSD either. <http://www.bsdtoday.com/2002/May/News680.html> I don't know what is better? (a) OS X doesn't rely on Perl for system tasks but install by default a current version of Perl, so a Perl developer could screw completely his machine without breaking the OS, or (b) the present situation where OS X use Perl for system tasks, which I guess present an advantage for Perl developers. Cheers -Emmanuel -- ______________________________________________________________________ Emmanuel D�carie / Programmation pour le Web - Programming for the Web Frontier - Perl - Javascript - XML <http://scriptdigital.com/>
