develooper Front page | perl.perl5.porters | Postings from September 2016

Re: "Warning: perl appears in your path"

Thread Previous | Thread Next
From:
Abigail
Date:
September 27, 2016 20:22
Subject:
Re: "Warning: perl appears in your path"
Message ID:
20160927202520.GA5855@almanda.fritz.box
On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 05:29:54PM +0200, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote:
> * Dave Mitchell <davem@iabyn.com> [2016-09-27 16:12]:
> > When installing a non-devel perl, you typically get a message like the
> > following on STDERR:
> >
> >     Warning: perl appears in your path in the following locations
> >     beyond where we just installed it:
> >         /bin/perl
> >         /usr/bin/perl
> >
> > My thoughts are:
> 
> I think the intent of the message needs translation into contemporary
> mores, where it applies when perl is being installed a) to somewhere
> in $PATH which is b) already shadowed by another perl in $PATH.


Why should the PATH of the process which does the installation be
relevant? That the installed perl is masked at that moment by another perl
doesn't mean that this is the case for any process using the installed
perl. Nor does it matter if the installed perl is executed using a full
path (say, from a she-bang line). OTOH, it won't warn if the installed
perl isn't masked by another perl in the PATH of the installing process,
but that won't imply it'll be masked in another process. 


IMO, the warning isn't very useful. I'd even say that in the current
day and age, someone who installs their perl by compiling their perl
from source and than running a 'make install' typically knows what
they're doing. 

Then again, a configure/make/make test/make install produces reams 
of output -- one warning more or less doesn't really matter.


Abigail

Thread Previous | Thread Next


nntp.perl.org: Perl Programming lists via nntp and http.
Comments to Ask Bjørn Hansen at ask@perl.org | Group listing | About