* [Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 10:37:14AM -0400] Joey Hess:
The rationale behind this statement is that a perl script shipped within Debian has its dependencies fulfilled via the package manager. This cannot be guaranteed if the perl environment interpreting it is not itself shipped via Debian. When using `#!/usr/bin/env perl', the script is interpreted by the first perl binary found in the $PATH of the user, so there's no guarantee this is the perl binary shipped by Debian.Wouldn't this argument apply equally well to #!/usr/bin/env python, which is quite commonly used?
I'd say it should, as well as to nearly any interpreter I can think of.Obviously the strength of the argument is debatable, so even if applying it could be ignored. Anyway I've found no quotes in Debian policies about scripting languages other than shell and Perl. I suspect this is only because years ago nearly all the `system' scripts were either shell or Perl, so the policy included some criteria for ensuring that those critical scripts would successfully run in as many environments as possible, but this only a speculation.
Ciao, Gian Piero.