On Mar 21, 2005, at 9:51 PM, Sherm Pendley wrote:
When you build a Perl from source, you specify a "prefix". The default prefix is "/usr/local".
The installation doesn't necessarily have to conform to the PREFIX-oriented directory structure - the lib/ and arch/ and bin/ and man/ sections and so on can be spread out in various places (e.g. /System/Library/Perl/ and /Library/Perl/).
It's not at all clear that a directory should be selected, for one thing. For another, choosing a directory and assuming the binary name is "perl" probably isn't the best choice anyway - if you want to choose /usr/local/bin/perl5.8.4, for instance, you're out of luck. A better solution would be to require a file selection, and only allow files that match either "perl" or "perlx.y.z" to be selected.
I think there should be no restrictions on the filename. Some people compile debugging binaries and call them /usr/local/bin/perldb. Some people name their binaries after their dogs. Better to just let the user choose whatever binary or symlink they have, regardless of where it is or what it's called.
If you need to find the other components of that installation, you can consult the %Config entries.
-Ken
