Upgrading Perl... Somebody just shoot me and put me out of my misery!

[Warren Block]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2013, Matthias Andree wrote:

> Am 23.11.2013 12:20, schrieb Mark Martinec:
>> On Friday 22 November 2013 21:40:07 Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>>> Now, one last little thing...
>>>
>>> The note in the UPDATING file dated 20131120 gives essentially the same
>>> instructions as the one dated 20131023, *however* it also contains this:
>>>
>>>    1) Change the option in lang/perl5.16:
>>>         make -C /usr/ports/lang/perl5.16 config
>>>
>>> HUH??  I don't understand this at all.  What exactly is "the option" that
>>> we are changing here?  And what does it matter to anything?
>>>
>>> It would be Nice if this were entierly less opaque.
>>
>> $ man ports
>> [...]
>>      config     Configure OPTIONS for this port using dialog4ports(1).
>>
>>> And what does it matter to anything?
>>
>> Gives you a choice to re-think your existing/chosen port options.
>> For example, a new default is now THREADS, but you may not like
>> it, as it somewhat increases the memory usage and requires
>> to rebuild all perl modules.
>
> Which shows an interesting facet of this whole tedious process:
>
> We're doing a lousy job of explaining the options to unsavvy users, and
> we're also doing a lousy job of tracking options.

I don't know if I'd say it that way, but many users really have a hard 
time interpreting UPDATING.

> Perhaps we should just slash down the options and go more for "build 
> the default" - it also reduces testing complexity and would give for a 
> more uniform ports experience for everyone (packages use default 
> options anyways).

That's supposed to be changing.

> I would even go that far to propose killing some common options such as
> NLS DOCS EXAMPLES and replace them by a "make globcalconfig" that sets
> them system-wide through make.conf, so that we don't need to set/reset
> them each and every time a port changes options, nor even offer them.

That is an excellent idea!  This would also act as documentation of 
what global options are available.