On May 28, 2012, at 1:15 AM, Bjarne D Mathiesen wrote:

> Bradley Giesbrecht wrote:
>> 
>> I will submit a new patch replacing ${perl5.major} with p5.14.
>> 
> 
> And I do know that using ${perl5.major} makes their builds unrepeatable
> according to some, but it only breaks if you switch version in perl5 -
> otherwise you'll get the same each and every time you build.

We agree that switching the per5 version using the perl5 PortGroup variable 
${perl5.major} for dependency selection will cause ports to build differently. 
It is MacPorts policy to avoid this situation.

> So we are at present stuck with three unpalatable situations :
> 1) using ${perl5.major} might break things for some people

It has been decided by MacPorts managers that ${perl5.major} as currently 
defined in the perl5 PortGroup is not an acceptable variable for selecting 
dependencies.

> 2) using a static version makes up/down-grading a PITA

I suspect the market for up/down-grading perl is very small. There has been 
some agreement that upgrading to a more current stable release (5.14 has been 
proposed) is desirable.

For adding support for multiple versions of perl the suggestion is to add 
variants or subports. This fits how MacPorts handles multiple version support 
for other ports like python.

> 3) hard to take decisions on when to upgrade the 5-<extensions>

Variants and subports would make this easier in the future. There would be 
little/no resistance for adding a variant or subport for a newer perl.


The current perl5.12 ports work well for me so I will leave further discussion 
on this subject to those with better ideas and more passion for perl then I.


Regards,
Bradley Giesbrecht (pixilla)

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature

_______________________________________________
macports-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev

Reply via email to