Subject: Re: perl pkg adds symlink /usr/bin/perl ?
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Jaromir Dolecek <dolecek@ics.muni.cz>
List: current-users
Date: 12/15/1997 15:51:43
Nathan J Williams wrote:
> [moved from source-changes to current-users for purposes of keeping
> noise down on source-changes]
> 
>    : - should we change this to /usr/pkg/bin/perl?
> 
>    This should be /usr/bin/perl to maintain maximumm compatibility.  (If the
>    package version of perl doesn't create a symlink to the binary in
>    /usr/bin/perl, it's very broken.)
> 
> 	Um, no. /usr/bin shouldn't ever be touched by a package
> installation. That is sacrosanct to the base operating system.  We had
> this argument; we're putting package-stuff in /usr/pkg. /usr/bin/perl
> should *not* work unless we integrate perl into our source tree (and
> for this purpose, pkgsrc doesn't count). 
> 
> 	The problem that you're trying to address is that there's no
> cross-system way to invoke non-standard interpreters. Filesystems are

Yeas, there is. #!/usr/bin/env perl

> hardly a standard namespace. You can get away with /bin/sh, /bin/csh,
> /bin/cat, /usr/bin/awk, and maybe a couple of others across a
> reasonable set of platforms, but for perl, tcl, expect, python, hugs,
> and any of your other favorite interpreters you're stuck customizing
> all the scripts you use.

jd
-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <dolecek@ics.muni.cz>	http://www.ics.muni.cz/~dolecek/
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