needing install OpenOffice.org without messing up perl

[Matthew Seaman]

Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> Scott Bennett <bennett at cs.niu.edu> writes:

>>      Why wouldn't OOo, once installed, simply use whatever were
>> installed as /usr/local/bin/perl?
> 
> Because perl doesn't tend to be backwards-compatible.

Untrue.

perl as a language is generally very good at backwards compatibility. There is
new syntax available in 5.10, but it's pretty much a superset of 5.8, so existing
perl programs should "just work"(tm).  In fact, I've not seen any problems on a
swathe of machines I've updated.

{{{
   Aside::

The problem comes for applications that embed a perl interpreter.  Meaning
they dynamically link against libperl.so.  OpenOffice doesn't do this as far
as I can tell, but eg. snmpd does:

happy-idiot-talk:~:% ldd /usr/local/sbin/snmpd 
/usr/local/sbin/snmpd:
        libnetsnmpagent.so.16 => /usr/local/lib/libnetsnmpagent.so.16 (0x28082000)
        libnetsnmphelpers.so.16 => /usr/local/lib/libnetsnmphelpers.so.16 (0x280c5000)
        libnetsnmpmibs.so.16 => /usr/local/lib/libnetsnmpmibs.so.16 (0x280e6000)
        libwrap.so.5 => /usr/lib/libwrap.so.5 (0x2819b000)
        libnetsnmp.so.16 => /usr/local/lib/libnetsnmp.so.16 (0x281a2000)
        libcrypto.so.5 => /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.so.5 (0x2824f000)
        libelf.so.1 => /usr/lib/libelf.so.1 (0x28397000)
        libkvm.so.4 => /lib/libkvm.so.4 (0x283c0000)
        libdevstat.so.6 => /lib/libdevstat.so.6 (0x283c8000)
        libperl.so => /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/mach/CORE/libperl.so (0x283cd000) <<<<--****
        libm.so.5 => /lib/libm.so.5 (0x284fd000)
        libcrypt.so.4 => /lib/libcrypt.so.4 (0x28512000)
        libutil.so.7 => /lib/libutil.so.7 (0x2852b000)
        libc.so.7 => /lib/libc.so.7 (0x28539000)
        libz.so.4 => /lib/libz.so.4 (0x2863b000)
        libthr.so.3 => /lib/libthr.so.3 (0x2864d000)

That is dependent on the version of perl installed -- not just because the
version number is embedded in the path to the shlib, but also because the
ABI can change between different versions.  In this case, you would have no
alternative but to recompile the app to link against a different version of
perl.

}}}

One way to fix the problem of dragging in an unwanted version of perl when
using precompiled packages for OpenOffice is to do the following:

     0) I'm assuming perl-5.10 is already installed

     i) Download the openoffice package you want to install.

	  # setenv PKG_SITES 'ftp.freebsd.org other.site.org third.site.org'
          # pkg_fetch openoffice.org-3.1.0_2

    ii) Install all required dependencies for OpenOffice /except/ for
        perl-5.8 for the package you downloaded:

          # pkg_info -qr ./openoffice.org-3.1.0_2.tbz | grep -v perl | \
	    cut -d ' ' -f 2 | xargs portinstall 

   iii) Install the OpenOffice package without dependencies:

          # pkg_add -i ./openoffice.org-3.1.0_2.tbz

    iv) Use pkgdb to fix the dependency linkages:

	  # pkgdb -F
 
        (when prompted, substitute perl-5.10 instead of the missing perl-5.8
         dependency) 

However, this is quite an inelegant approach which involves spending far too
much effort (It's also untested by me and quite possibly won't work at all...).
You'ld have to do the same thing all over again if ever you need to upgrade
OpenOffice.  Chances are some of the dependencies you install at stage (ii)
will have been updated in ports after the openoffice.org package was built:
this should do no more than cause some warning messages and maybe make you do
a bit more work at stage (iv).  Or it could just make everything break horribly.

Note: this *won't* work in the general case -- it relies on perl scripts being
compatible across different versions.  Using this approach to make arbitrary
substitutions in the dependencies of a package will almost certainly end in
tears before bedtime.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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