*BSD News Article 87677


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!europa.clark.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!kirin.wwa.com!news.ucdavis.edu!relay.nuxi.com!obrien
From: David E. O'Brien <obrien@relay.nuxi.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Makewhatis Broken?
Date: 3 Feb 1997 08:25:15 GMT
Organization: University of California, Davis
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <5d47db$46a$3@mark.ucdavis.edu>
References: <5chp2p$p2u@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <5coivj$l88@uriah.heep.sax.de> <5ctn3o$ha1@cicsun.univ-bpclermont.fr>
NNTP-Posting-Host: nuxi.ucdavis.edu
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA release 970120]
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34643

Roger Espel Llima <espel@llaic.univ-bpclermont.fr> wrote:
: >> I noticed today that my /usr/bin/makewhatis is broken..
: >> Apparently it works under perl 4, but not the 5 that is part of the 
: >> freebsd 2.1.6.1 distribution..
: >
: >Huh?  /usr/bin/perl is still Perl 4.

: And is it going to be changed to perl 5 anytime soon?  Perl 5 has been
: out for something like 2 years now, and is just as stable as perl4 ever
: was.

As Joerg, said, nope.  Perl 5 is just *too* big -- non-Perl lovers don't
want to see it in the base system.

HOWEVER, if you (or someone else) is a Perl hacker and wants to submit
diffs to /usr/bin/makewhatis so that it works fine under Perl4 and Perl
5.003, I'm more than sure they would be commmited.  I'm guessing it's not
that hard of a job.

-- 
-- David    (obrien@NUXI.com  -or-  obrien@FreeBSD.org)