"Cosimo Streppone"<cosimo@streppone.it> writes:
I'd like to know what you guys think of this article:
http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2012/01/avoiding-the-vendor-perl-fad-diet.html
and what's the state of Debian, which I personally find
better than Redhat, but i've always been tempted to go
for the DIY route.
I feel the article is somewhere between mistaken and misguided.
I have run production services on Debian servers using the vendor perl
for more than 15 years with no significant problems or headaches. In
fact, I track testing on my production servers and have done so for
roughly a decade with no particular perl-related problems. Lots of
others, maybe, but not so much Perl. ;)
That said, I am probably an unusual case: I was among the earliest
packagers of perl modules for Debian (#2, maybe, at least in the single
digits), and I am the system administrator for the boxes I run things
on, so I regard managing the perl install as simply another part of my
job, one I have long experience with.
I suppose if you think of the OS as something separate from, rather than
deeply connected with, the code you are attempting to run, then you
might feel inclined to try and manage your Perl environment in some sort
of separate structure. I also suppose that if you had a vendor who has
little interest in Perl (as, I believe, is the case with RedHat, or
certainly other Un*x vendors), that you would feel a little
under-served.
But I think anyone who is running on Debian and using a self-installed
perl is working a *lot* harder than necessary, either through ignorance
or foolishness. If I were interviewing someone and they told me they
were doing that, I would count it as a strike against them.
I believe this is because Debian uses Perl for some of its most basic
facilities, meaning Perl does not get neglected. As a consequence (and
as a result of the excellent work of the debian-perl community---thanks
guys!) we have a rich, well-tended Perl ecosystem.
Mike.