Perl 5.10?

[Tim Judd]

Jerry wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:06:46 -0800 (PST)
> "Dr. Jennifer Nussbaum" <bg271828 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Its now just over a year since Perl 5.10.0 was relased, but its still
>> not in FreeBSD. (/usr/ports/lang only has 5.8). 
>>
>> Can someone tell me why? Is there any way to get it working stably? Is
>> there any schedule for when it will be added? This is a major release
>> of a major language, not an obscure maintenence update.
>>     
>
> I asked that same question on the "FreeBSD-Ports" forum a few months
> ago; however, I never did receive a satisfactory answer. I believe it
> is readily apparent that it will not be included with the next release
> of FreeBSD; i.e., '7.1'.
>
> Since it does seem to work quite well under Linux, I was wondering
> if there was some fundamental flaw in FBSD that prevented it from
> working correctly here. Even so, failing to get  a major project like
> Perl running properly in over a year on FBSD does not bode well for the
> OS.
>
>   
on the contrary, when 5.8 was released, it took a long time to move to 
that.  And when I asked that question on IRC (why 5.10 isn't currently 
used), it was described to me that the 5.6 to 5.8 "move" broke 
everything and caused lots of headache.  World and Kernel used to (at 
least) use perl as a glue to make stuff works.  I bet there's at least 
some 5.8 glue for world or kernel.

You can always download the source and compile it yourself.  Perl's 
popular enough that I bet it'll compile fine.

I hear it completely as:
    1) World glue may break, and until you can be sure it'll work okay, 
wait.
    2) Kernel glue may break, and until you can be sure it'll work okay, 
wait.
    3) Ports glue/dependencies may break, and until you can be sure 
it'll work okay, wait.

Given it's taken a year (I didn't realize it was that long) for this 
wait/check to happen, there must be something holding it up.  You might 
be able to coexist 5.10 and 5.8 -- except the symlink 'perl' will point 
to ONE of them.  I suggest you point it at 5.8

Good luck.