Perl 5.004, perl modules, and binary compatibility
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As the official version of perl 5.004 is finally out (I must admit I
haven't installed the debian package yet, but I run webservers with lots
of perl CGI and can't afford to break them), I have a few questions,
comments, and thoughts.
1. In building my own perl kit for other machines I maintain, I noticed
the option to maintain binary module compatibility with 5.003 at the
expense of a poluted namespace. I assume this option was chosen for the
debian package.
2. I also assume that perl being compiled for glibc is going to end up
being a flag day for all the binary compiled perl modules. May I suggest
that that would be the ideal time to compile perl with a clean namespace.
Perhaps upload such a version of perl into experimental to allow the perl
module developers time to get new versions of their packages released. I
expect that liberal useage of versioned depends would be necessary to
prevent anything from actually breaking.
3. I also think that any package that provides a perl module should be
labled as such in its package name. Package names like www-search and
alias hardly suggest that this is a perl module I'd like to install.
CGI-modules is hardly better.
4. I am also concerned about the ease of upgrading the bundled modules,
especially CGI.pm and the other CGI:: modules. While I realize they are
included in the upstream perl kit, the CGI modules especially are likely
to be upgraded at a far greater rate than perl is. Does perl look at the
site-perl directory before looking in its normal librarys?
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Scott K. Ellis | Argue for your limitations and |
| storm@gate.net | sure enough, they're yours. |
| | -- Illusions |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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