Re: [gentoo-user] Re: I don't understand Perl. What do I do after an update?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 21 July 2010 20:33:42 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 07/21/2010 08:34 PM, Willie Wong wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 08:04:54PM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> >> Portage recently updated Perl from 5.10.1 to 5.12.1 (and later -r1).
> >> However, a crapload of files still remain in
> >> /usr/lib/perl5/{site_perl,vendor_perl}/5.10.1.  I found out the hard way
> >> after trying to emerge openoffice (and everyone knows how painful that
> >> one is):
> >>
> >> What is the user required to do after updating Perl?  elogv doesn't tell
> >> me anything about upgrading.
> >
> > There's this neat little script called perl-cleaner
> >
> > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/perl/perl-cleaner.xml
>
> Thanks.  How do I call the script?  I don't have any idea what perl
> modules or ph files are (or why I need them).  What do I need to do?

Short version:
You run 

perl-cleaner --modules

and it just does it.

Long version:
perl comes out the box as an interpreter and some base functionality. The 
community provides a brazillion useful modules for all sort of things. Like eg 
Date. Need to do some Date manipulation? No need to write the disgusting code 
yourself to work with Dates, someone else already did it. Just install a 
module.

The trouble is that modules are often written in perl itself and closely tied 
to the version of perl used. If you upgrade perl, you must also rebuild all 
the modules tied to it, they don't just migrate.

This is a painful process. It's enough to drive a sysadmin to drink or (god 
forbid), to Windows. Portage can't help as the ebuild doesn't know what you 
have installed. So you must run a script to go and dig out all this crap for 
you.

All I can say is, every day I get down on my knees and offer thanks that perl 
is not slotted.



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com