Help wanted: Install of p5-JSON-Parse removes Perl ???

[MJ]

On 1/11/2019 4:50 pm, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> In message <a25ca19b-a574-0102-607e-46518383014e at gmail.com>,
> MJ <mafsys1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 1/11/2019 2:07 pm, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>>> I found I needed to install the p5-JSON-Parse package for some work I'm
>>> doing at present.  No problem, I thought, I'll su'd to root and then
>>> just type:
>>>
>>> pkg install p5-JSON-Parse
>>>
>>> I did that and the log is shown below.  I REALLY don't understand it.
>>> I don't understand why this simple thing caused pkg to attempt to install
>>> a fresh new Perl (5.30.0) *and* at the same time try to reinstall the
>>> one I already had installed which was apparently perl-5.28.2.
>>>
>>> What's up with that?
>>
>> It (obviously?) thinks you've got some other package that depends on 5.28.2.
> Yeabut is that a good excuse to render my already installed Perl
> non-functional, which is exactly what happened?

Well what's it to do? If you have one package dependent on 5.28.2 and another one on 5.30.0 then it has no choice.

Perhaps what would be preferred is that it stops any install and tells you that the package needs 5.30.0 and you have installed 5.28.2? That would seem more logical. That way it will refuse an install until you've updated to 5.30.0.



>
> Something is very very wrong here.
>
>> Have you tried performing a package update/upgrade?
> I have now.  I ended up doing a forced pkg delete on both Perl versions
> and then a fresh install on 5.30.0 and now at least my Perl scripts seem
> to be working again, for which I am greatful, but of course, I am
> eternally worried about there being some subtle version skew problem
> that will only show up later.

Well that's a problem with perl, surely. After all, how are you to have two or more versions of perl co-existing when at least one must be symbolically linked to "perl"?


>
> But that seems like a minor concern at this point.  Far more troubling
> is the fact that pkg, in its infinite wisdom, somehow decided to install
> two versions of Perl at the same time, breaking both in the process.

 From afar it didn't break both, it just failed to add a softlink. Is that not the case?


>
> I hope that somebody will look at that.

Well, nobody here will unless the maintainer for perl is active. If you want this looked at, I suggest contacting the port maintainer and/or raising a bug report.


Regards

MarkJ