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Re: [PATCH 5.6.0-RC2] hints/freebsd.sh - make perl work on FreeBSD5.0
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From:
Andy Dougherty
Date:
March 15, 2000 09:38
Subject:
Re: [PATCH 5.6.0-RC2] hints/freebsd.sh - make perl work on FreeBSD5.0
Message ID:
Pine.SOL.4.10.10003151213560.22041-100000@maxwell.phys.lafayette.edu
On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Anton Berezin wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 11:58:57AM -0500, Andy Dougherty wrote:
>
> >> Last time when I submitted similar thing for 4.*, I was corrected,
> >> and 4.0* was put in freebsd.sh instead. :-)
>
> > Then whoever did that "correcting" was wrong :-).
>
> Well, I am not so sure about that.
I am :-).
> The problem is, we are not talking
> here about `specific minor version differences'; rather, 5.0-current as
> of March 2000, and 5.0-current as of March 2001 (and 5.1-release as of
> April 2001) will be very different. 5.0 just forked off 4.0, and has a
> long time ahead, with lots of changes coming.
Sure, but not necessarily all of them will require changes the hints file.
As a concrete example, in some cases your patch just changed 4.0* into
4.0*|5.0*. Had the previous version of the hints file just included the
most recent case as the default, 5.0 would have required NO CHANGES in
those parts of the hints file.
As a second concrete example, consider perl5.005_03's hints/freebsd.sh.
5.005_03 is still the official maintenance version, but it doesn't
hand FreeBSD 5.0 gracefully at all.
You have to remember that hints files need to have a long shelf life. The
current maintenance version 5.005_03, has been around almost a full year.
Assume the worst. Assume that the hints file you write today is going to
be used _exactly as is_ for at least the next year, possibly longer.
Thus assume that folks will try to use perl-5.6.0 with FreeBSD 5.1.
> So basically, I think that 5.0* is as reasonable _today_ as 5.* is -
> there is a good chance of additional hints tweaking to be done later
> this year.
But you'll only have a chance to do that tweaking if there are more
maintenance releases of perl during the year as things evolve. That's not
guaranteed. You can't assume you'll have that chance.
I would use neither 5.0* nor 5.*. I would simply use *. Sure, it's quite
possible that when someone tries to run this hints file a year from now
under 5.1 that the hints won't be exactly right. However, the 5.0-based
guess is probably more likely to be right than no guess at all!
Sorry to go on so long about this. It really isn't that big a deal, but
it's also not hard to program defensively in this instance. I can't see
any reason not to.
Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu
Dept. of Physics
Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042
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