[HEADS UP] perl symlinks in /usr/bin will be gone

[Douglas G. Allen]

Anton,

>Unless I hear too many cries "don't do that" (with justification), I
>plan to not create any perl symlinks in /usr/bin in the forthcoming
>upgrade of both lang/perl5.8 (to 5.8.6) and lang/perl5 (to 5.6.2).  This
>will ONLY be true for FreeBSD 5.X and FreeBSD CURRENT;  the existing
>pollution of /usr/bin will still be performed for older versions of
>FreeBSD, if requested via use.perl script.
>
>In practical terms this will mean a one-time sweep of your scripts in
>order to convert them, in a typical case, from #! /usr/bin/perl to
>#! /usr/local/bin/perl.
>
>CORRECT perl-dependant ports should not be affected.

While I agree that correct ports shouldn't be affected, I think that this 
will make a difference in how FreeBSD is looked at as a whole.  I know that 
when I write stuff for other people in perl, it is presumed that perl is in 
/usr/bin, not /usr/local/bin because most of these people are running some 
Linux distribution.  I also thought that is was requested to have perl in 
/usr/bin?

>In order to keep pkg-install simple, no old symlink chasing and removal
>will be done, although the detailed instructions will be posted in
>ports/UPDATING and in pkg-message for the ports.

I would rather have a couple of symlinks chased down and removed than have 
potentially hundreds (or thousands) of scripts needing to be tweaked upon 
installation of a new piece of software that is predominantly Linux 
oriented.  I try to wrote my stuff to work on multiple platforms (FreeBSD. 
Linux, Windows) without major modification as a practical thing.  This 
would make it more platform dependent for patches or tech support.

I would prefer to NOT see this change implemented.

                                                 Doug