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Postings from March 2000
"Simon Cozens" <simon@othersideofthe.earth.li> wrote
> FAILED:
> Storable (sv_yes, sv_no, sv_undef undefined)
> Curses (na)
> Term::ReadLine::Gnu (na, sv_undef)
Lack of pollution strikes again. We're going to see a lot of these.
Lots and lots and lots and lots, clogging up perlbug and c.l.p.* .
At least in the short term, we need more pollution. And here's a
half baked idea about how we might achieve it.
MakeMaker should look at the date of the module. (What's the 'date'
of a module? That's one of the ways in which this idea is half-baked.)
Then
a) If it's older than Threshhold1 (say, the release date of 5.005_03)
we know it must have been built with old Perls, so we
know it's pollution-resistant. So just force POLLUTE on,
as if POLLUTE=1 had been specified.
(And to be polite, put out a message saying it's been done.)
b) If it's after Threshold2 (say, the release date of 5.6.0),
it shouldn't *need* pollution (else the author has been *very*
lax in his testing).
c) If it's between Threshold1 and Threshold2, it's _probably_
pollution-resistant. So we could either
i) Force POLLUTE on, and put out a message saying "If you
suffer from name clashes, try again setting POLLUTE=0".
ii) Leave POLLUTE alone and put out a message saying "If this
fails because ... undefined, try again setting POLLUTE=1".
Although it's backward rather than forward looking, I'd prefer c(i),
on the grounds that in practice most modules don't suffer name
clashes from pollution.
It's all a bit pragmatic, but perhaps that's what the P in Perl
stands for.
Mike Guy