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List:       fedora-devel-list
Subject:    Re: Modularity and the system-upgrade path
From:       "John M. Harris Jr" <johnmh () splentity ! com>
Date:       2019-11-20 21:15:26
Message-ID: 4372736.p9E4jUYXyU () marvin ! jharris ! pw
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On Tuesday, November 19, 2019 9:20:29 AM MST Kevin Kofler wrote:
> But the scripts do not need to care about the version of Perl you are 
> running, do they? It matters for compiled code, but why for Perl scripts? 
> Those can just run with the default version of Perl if they support it, or 
> with the shebang line changed to something like #!/usr/bin/perl5.30 if
> that's what they require.

There are certain edge cases where the version really does matter for scripts, 
but for most scripts you would be correct. I also agree with your solution for 
scripts that actually do require a specific version, however.

> The best way to deal with conflicts in PATH is to suffix the binaries, not 
> to move them. But that is only needed when it makes a difference for the
> end user which version they run. If the executable script "foo" does the
> exact same thing when run under Perl 5.28 or 5.30, then you need only one
> /usr/bin/foo set up to run against the distribution default Perl, the other
> one is redundant (which is the nice thing about parallel installation: you
> do not have to support running all the executables under a non-default
> Perl, only those that actually need it).

While that would work well in the Perl context, there are cases where it 
wouldn't work, for example there are several programs which hard-code paths 
which we would need to come up with an alternative path for and patch.

> I think that any model that has conflicts is not workable for the Fedora 
> user base. Desktops and small servers are not normally containerized, so 
> being able to install different applications without conflict is a non-
> negotiable requirement.

Agreed, in fact most workstations and servers with RHEL are not containerized 
either. Before RHEL 8, which was essentially just released, nothing even 
recommended containerizing RHEL.

-- 
John M. Harris, Jr.
Splentity

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