On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Michael C. Robinson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-09-16 at 10:17 -0700, Patrick J. Timlick wrote:
>> In my "Weird Things That Happen" experience, one should heed Keith's
>> cautions and advice when attempting to upgrade Python. Do just as he says,
>> except replace Perl with Python.
>>
>> -- Pat
>
> A few problems with this.
>
> 1. SpamCannibal and EasyTCP require perl, not python.
>
> 2. The Slackware 10.1 based server is running perl 5.12.1 just fine.
>
> 3. Obviously, CentOS's perl 5.8.8 doesn't match.
>
> 4. I've already installed perl 5.12.1 as the default on CentOS.
>
> 5. I did an rpm -e --nodeps for all of the CentOS perl packages and
> then I deleted /usr/lib/perl5 prior to source installation.
>
> Thing is, there has to be a way to do this and if there isn't, there
> should be an explanation why.
Yes, interfaces change and things break. RHEL5/Centos5 is at the end
of the major update period.
We will probably get one more with major fixes that are not security
related after RHEL6 comes out
at the end of the year.
> When perl 6 is finished, will people
> still prefer python? I don't understand why people want
> to leave perl for python.
Depends. I find python is easier to read.
> If Redhat has done something strange to
> perl, what did Redhat do?
> Can I duplicate this with the newer source
> code to be compatible with CentOS 5.x perl and perl 5.12.1 on the
> slackware based server?
The tarball for the 5.12.1 and the source rpm. stick the two together
and start building.
Oh, btw, start figuring out what all the patch files do as these were
probably pushed up stream
but you don't know until you look at each one.
> The slackware server is nfs root based, so
> please don't suggest that I upgrade.
The reason for using a distro like Centos is similar to/and why people
use Redhat is for stability.
Moving perl to something that breaks existing working programs is not
in the cards.
Centos follows the exact same packages.
The idea of leaving the base perl and building/installing the newer
version is very reasonable as
it won't break things that worked before like vim (and others). If
you need 5.12.1 for EasyTCP
then place in /usr/local/{bin,lib} as needed and change the few places
in EasyTCP to point to
the new version of perl.
If you really want to do things like replace a major language that has
dependencies in dozens of packages.
Go for it. Be prepared for a lot of bumps on the way. Do it on a
machine you don't care about as when
you get it to the point that none of the major programs that use perl
work, re-install from scratch and start over
learning from your mistakes. That the beauty of of Open Source, you
are free to do what you want with it.
>
> I'm tempted to install perl 5.8.8 via yum on CentOS, but this won't
> match what I have on the Slackware server and it is older. Is there
> a way to install the standard perl to a non standard area to study
> it somehow so I can figure out what RedHat did to it?
Grab the source rpm files from
http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Server/en/os/SRPMS/
>
> EasyTCP isn't working on the CentOS server with perl 5.12.1, I get a
> lot of unintialized value errors and I don't know why.
Ask the author. If you ask a question in the right way, with enough
detail. You will
probably get a useful answer.
> Isn't perl capable of emulating older versions of itself?
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