>On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Donald Lee wrote:
>
>> OK.  My bad.
>>
>> When installing the mySQL binary package, it complains that perl is
>> not installed.  It is, but not via the package mechanism.
>>
>> Is there a simple way to tell the package system that perl is there,
>> without re-installing it as a package?  I know I can use "pkg_add -f",
>> but that would also force installation if other stuff (that may _not_
>> be installed) is missing.
>
>No, there isn't a way to do this. It's a design decision. The problem is
>that pkgsrc is designed to be internally consistent. That means that for
>instance perl is configured to do certain things that the pkgsrc perl
>modules will expect. I'm not 100% on all of the perl config, but I doubt
>your perl has the same config. So the perl you have won't do what pkgsrc
>needs.
>
>Thus you should install the pkgsrc perl. :-)
>
>Take care,
>
>Bill

If there is some mutual exclusivity at work here, will the pkgsrc
perl continue to do what my current installation expects?  If I have
two perl installations, will they fight?

This is on my production server, which is quite stable by the way. (NetBSD
is very nice that way) I don't want to mess it up.  My reasons for doing
the installs myself basically boil down to my being able to understand
and control exactly what is installed.  (I find the perl PODs a little
terrifying, by the way, but I have little choice but to use them.)

The package system is cool from an ease-of-installation perspective, but
the increased effective opacity is troubling to me.

My inclination would be to do the pkg_add -f and hope for the best.  In
theory, perl should work about the same, as long as it is installed
correctly, and has the requisite parts.  If I have to move to a model
where anything I add *has* to be via pkgsrc, then at the least, I have to
set up a test machine and do a little testing first, and I'd like to
avoid that.

Thanks,

-dgl-