absolutely on-topic rant follows... On Sunday, January 12, 2003, at 12:04 PM, Steve Linberg wrote:
I've burned two solid days on this now, and rather than shoot myself Iit seems most every other day there is someone else experiencing difficulties with Perl 5.8.0 and Fink and some combination thereof.
think it's time to ask for help.
..
Trying to get this system working in 10.2 has been a nightmare, and it
seems to have a lot to do with Perl.
I did a clean install of Jaguar, and carefully followed the instructions
at <http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/perl.html> to do a clean
5.8 install to replace the 5.6.0 that inexplicably ships with Jaguar. I
..
You don't get very far in CPAN.pm before it tries to blast 5.8.0 down your
throat. It fails to install because it only passes 99.70% of the tests,
Pre-Jaguar I upgraded my stock Apple perl and suffered all the way until I installed Jaguar. Since then I don't touch CPAN and Fink. Fortunately for me, my needs are minimal, and I am able to work with whatever Apple has provided.
The reality is -- there are those who say that it all works provided you know what you are doing. The problem is that we, those who don't know what we are doing, are a majority. Those who do know and do not experience problem (or are able to solve the problem themselves, hence, being those that provide help to others) are a minority. The situation has to be just the opposite. And saying that perl is complicated and perl does this and does that, and perl can't be compared to other languages is just dodging the fact that perl is simply very easy to bugger up, and almost impossible to retrieve once buggered up.
I love perl, and choose it over anything I can avoid. I do things with it that I wouldn't start doing with other languages (granted, my needs are pretty narrow). But I do want Perl to be easier to install, maintain, and difficult to bugger up. As much as I like Morbus's articles on Apache, I think it was really wrong for Apple to commission that article on Perl 5.8.0 because now most everyone thinks that Perl 5.8.0 is now sanctioned and they can go upgrade. Add Fink to picture which does its own voodoo and what we have is a royal pain in the derierre.
To those who still have the stock install -- for the love of god, don't upgrade if you don't have to. Perl 5.6.0 works just fine for me, and probably will for most of you. Don't even bother with Fink, as much good as the idea of Fink might be. Upgrade only if your life and your work requires it. There is nothing but grief that will follow otherwise.
To the minority that is in the position to provide help to us who have buggered up. Please make it more difficult for us to bugger it up. Fix CPAN, make Fink not mess with the stock Apple stuff, advise folks to not upgrade to 5.8.0 over the stock install... etc. It will direct everyone's energy to actually doing stuff with Perl than with making Perl work in the first place.
Please don't tell me that I am wrong in what I am ranting about, because I do feel the above is correct.
That said, my heartfelt thanks go to the entire opensource community for making Perl and other tools available, and thanks for being around to help us when we do screw up.
Puneet.
