On 9/1/06, Ben Collver <collver@peak.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 10:06:05PM -0400, matthew sporleder wrote:
> > >perl:
> > >    I'm revoking this one. Perl is too large and complicated, and it's
> > >    not required.
> > Yes, operating systems that include perl/java/python/etc are just
> > forcing someone to maintain two versions on their system and confuse
> > everyone a lot.
>
> I've seen cluster nodes with a dozen "virtual servers", some of which
> had multiple versions of Perl with specific build options desired by
> specific developers.  The administrators didn't get confused.
>
> But having it built in leads me to wonder if it can be removed, or
> properly upgraded.  For example, parts of Gentoo may depend on Python,
> or parts of OSX may depend on a JVM.  How can one argue in this case
> that it shouldn't be built in?
>

The situation goes like this:
My very important OS utility X depends on Y.
Y becomes old, out-of-date, insecure.
In parallel, the OS becomes old, but not really out-of-date.  (OS's
have more useful life than one version of perl)
New tool Z needs updates Y, I now need two Y's.

Having two Y's now means I need to mess around with #!/path/to/Y
because, of course, my OS installed old Y in the most common place.
:)

If you can -avoid- these dependencies all together, you're in a much
better situation to stay out of that mess.