[HEADS UP] perl symlinks in /usr/bin will be gone

[Andrew McNaughton]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Matthias Andree wrote:

> Oliver Lehmann <lehmann at ans-netz.de> writes:
>
>> Anton Berezin wrote:
>>
>>> In practical terms this will mean a one-time sweep of your scripts in
>>> order to convert them, in a typical case, from #! /usr/bin/perl to
>>> #! /usr/local/bin/perl.
>>
>> Wouldn't that break most of the 3rd party scripts out in the world?
>
> Hardcoded paths in scripts are a mess. What if I installed Perl into
> /opt/mumble on some other machine? /usr/freeware? /what/ever? Changed
> $PREFIX and/or $LOCALBASE?
>
> I'd say let the ports patch the right location at install time and if
> they break after upgrading both perl and the port, they deserve no better.

Ports covers only a *very* small proportion of the perl scripts in use out 
there.  There are for instance no end of CGI scripts and system automation 
scripts out there that are produced for in house use.  Imagine what will 
be a fairly typical case:  Some website owner who hired a programmer in 
the past to set stuff up suddenly finds their site is broken.  They'll 
probably call their hosting provider first. The hosting provider might 
require all their affected customers to find someone who understands 
enough to fix this - which would add up to millions of dollars of 
expenditure worldwide if everyone took that approach.  More likely, most 
hosting providers would put back in the symlinks that it is proposed to 
remove.  They'll then have a 'non-standard' modification to maintain on 
their own systems, and this will probably be standard practice, not 
modifying all the scripts people want to put in.  Seems like a lot of 
people wasting effort to me.

Andrew McNaughton

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Andrew McNaughton           http://www.scoop.co.nz/
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