Re: perl scripts and lintian warnings

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Ossama Othman wrote:

> I get the following warning from lintian on my libace4.6-doc package:
> 
>    W: libace4.6-doc: executable-not-elf-or-script usr/doc/libace4.6-doc/examples/tutorials/colorize
>    
> This apparently occurs since this perl script (and others) starts with
> the following:
> 
> eval '(exit $?0)' && eval 'exec perl -w -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
>     & eval 'exec perl -S $0 $argv:q'
>     if 0;

Mmm, maybe this is the reason why fakeroot gives strange message errors
when texi2html is run from it?

> All of the perl scripts start with this since a Perl book suggests
> starting perl scripts with the above since it allows you to run the
> script without explicitly stating where perl is located in the path.

Since, by policy, Debian perl is always in /usr/bin, the trick is not
needed in Debian.

> Since this is actually suggested in a book, it seems reasonable that
> many other perl scripts start this way, hence causing lintian to give
> warnings.
> 
> Should I edit all the scripts (*ugh*) to use the standard
> "#!/usr/bin/perl" or should lintian's lab be updated?  I assume the
> former should be done since the existing perl scripts don't conform to
> Debian policy, right?

It seems not:

4.4 Scripts

   All command scripts, including the package maintainer scripts inside
   the package and used by dpkg, should have a #! line naming the shell
   to be used to interpret them.

   In the case of Perl scripts this should be #!/usr/bin/perl.

IMHO, since the script does not have a #! line, lintian does the right
thing here.

Thanks.

-- 
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