Re: Perl in LSB 3.2

Front page | perl.perl5.porters | Postings from May 2007

Thread Previous | Thread Next

From:

Stew Benedict

Date:

May 16, 2007 12:35

Subject:

Re: Perl in LSB 3.2

Message ID:

Pine.LNX.4.58.0705161459040.24809@norris.e-artisan.org

On Wed, 16 May 2007, Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote:

> On Wed, May 16, 2007 11:30 am, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> > On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 02:02:38PM -0400, Stew Benedict wrote:
> >> 2) Do we specify a perl version, what version (keeping in mind LSB
> >> tries to follow current "best practice" with the major distributions as
> >> our reference)?
> >
> > If we do, then it will go out of date.
> >
> >
> > Which would mean that putting in a newer version with bug fixes would
> > make a distribution non standards compliant.
> >
> > But if we don't, we instead run the risk that everyone sits on a very old
> >  version.
> 
> I thought there was a general problem with several OS distributions having
> tools that rely on (or at least are only reliable with) some older perl
> version, so that folks using those distributions tend to have a "system
> perl" in /usr/bin/perl, with a pretty fixed-in-stone version and a "user
> perl" in /usr/local, /opt, or elsewhere.  Are there no linux distributions
> that fall into this category?
> 

I haven't come across this in the distributions I've worked with, not to 
say that it isn't being done. 

From a quick sampling of what I have handy, it looks like 5.8.8 is 
fairly common:

SLES10: v5.8.8
RHEL5: v5.8.8
Mandriva 2007/2007.1 v5.8.8
Debian 4: v5.8.8
Ubuntu 6.10: v5.8.8 
FC6: v5.8.8

> >> 3) Is there a specification LSB can reference, or does spec work need
> >> to be done?
> >
> > Specification of what?
> 
> I read that as a specification for the Perl 5 language.  Which isn't going
> to happen.
> 

That is the sort of thing I had in mind, depending on what we end up 
choosing to standardize.

The scripting languages are a little different animal than what LSB has 
specified in the past. For libraries, LSB specifies the ABI, what interfaces 
are guaranteed to be available, etc. If there is an upstream document that 
can be referenced, that isn't a "living" doc subject to change, LSB will 
generally reference this, and will only document any differences (Linux 
behavior vs POSIX, for example). 

-- 
Stew Benedict

Thread Previous | Thread Next