perl and ports

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 11:15:12PM -0600, Donald J. O'Neill wrote:

> > > And if you want to install packages using the ports tree.
> >
> > Eh?
> >
> > > depend on installing packages only, ok. Of course, you have to wait
> > > for them to be built.
> > >
> > > I just ran pkg_info -R perl-5.8.5, too many to count by hand.
> >
> > Well, yeah, but that's because you installed perl 5.8.5 or something
> > that depends on it.  If you use 4.x most such ports will be happy
> > with the base system version of perl, and if you don't use 4.x then
> > ports that don't require perl won't install it.
> >
> 
> Yes, and that's my point Kris. Of the 537 ports that are installed on my 
> system, 318 of them require (have a dependency) perl-5.8.5 to run. What 
> about others that require it to build. So, if Gert, who is running 
> FSBD5.3 on an amd64 system and has been building ports and using 
> portupgrade, removes perl-5.8.5 (does a forced removal) because he 
> can't see that it's used all over the place and thinks of it as a 
> security issue because of earlier perl versions. He's going to have a 
> big problem on his hands the first time he tries to use portupgrade and 
> finds a lot of decencies missing in his package database, and running 
> pkgdb -F is going to fix them.

The original question was whether perl is a required dependency to use
the ports collection at all (no it isn't), not whether it is commonly
used by applications in the ports collection.

Thus, unless he is using a port that requires perl (the dependency
will be registered, of course), it can be removed.

Kris
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20050124/3a355c0e/attachment.bin