Re: Bug#906901: debian-policy: Perl script shebang requirement is disturbing and inconsistent with rest of policy

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Jonathan Nieder writes ("Bug#906901: debian-policy: Perl script shebang requirement is disturbing and inconsistent with rest of policy"):
> Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 08:42:11PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
...
> In this thread, there are three possible rules proposed:
> 
>  1. #!/usr/bin/env perl
>  2. #!/usr/bin/perl
>  3. Packager decides between 1 and 2, policy doesn't express a
>     preference.
> 
> The passage you are quoting is about the confusing user experience
> that (3) provides:

This confusing user experience only occurs if someone prepends a
different perl to $PATH.  Has anyone actually ever done this and got
useful results ?  Has anyone actually even wanted to do this ?

I asked Norbert this on Wednesday:

  Norbert, is your concern theoretical, or is this a thing you have
  actually wanted to do ?

but it was buried in a longer mail and Norbert seems to have missed
it.

If no one has tried this, or is likely to, then it doesn't really
matter what we do because any of the options will have the same
effect.  In that case it's probably worth repeating upstream's
recommendation of /usr/bin/perl in our own policy as a SHOULD.

I certainly agree that this should be demoted to a SHOULD right away.
Maintainers should not be working, now, to change their scripts to
conform to a policy which we might change.

Ian.