Re: Bug#2182: perl shouldn't touch /usr/local
> Did anyone read my mail message about this? Did it get through?
It did get through; sorry, I should have replied to it sooner.
>> I feel very strongly against the base system mucking with anything in
>> /usr/local -- this is by definition *my* playground, and mine alone as
>> system administrator of my machine. The system should not be preconfigured
>> to depend on anything inside it apart from the directory stubs listed in
>> FSSTND.
>
> It in no way shape or form depends on anything being in /usr/local
> anymore than having /usr/local/bin in your PATH causes you to depend on
> anything in /usr/local.
True, although I have more control over my default PATH than I currently do
over where perl looks by default for library files.
>> Having perl preconfigured to look in /usr/local/lib/site_perl for local
>> extensions may be convenient (for you), but it is really wrong for the perl
>> package to be imposing structure /usr/local, not to mention *depend* on any
>> of its contents for normal operation.
>
> As I said before, it in no way shape form whathaveyou depends on
> anything outside of /usr/bin/perl5 except for some executables in
> /usr/bin.
It *will* depend on /usr/local if I happen to throw something into
lib/site_perl and someone writes a script that happens to use it. What if I
want to keep my local perl files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 instead? Or what if I
want to install an unrelated software package that, for some bizarre reason,
wants to use /usr/local/lib/site_perl for another purpose?
My point is I don't believe the perl package should dictate where I am to put
my local perl library.
> Would you prefer that I have perl configured to look in
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/i486-linux for site extensions? This is the
> default in the distribution if I specify prefix=/usr. I fixed this in
> response to a bug by Manoj because I really don't think that site
> specific extension belong in /usr/lib.
Yes, I think it should. However, I think a reasonable compromise would be to
have postinst query the user for an alternate location, and optionally replace
perl's default directory with a symlink pointing to the user's choice.
How does that sound?
--
Robert Leslie
rob@mars.org
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