Re: [MacPerl-Porters] Identifying Ported Modules

[Paul Schinder <schinder@pobox.com>]

At 4:29 PM -0600 1/6/00, Matthew Langford wrote:
>On the Mac, CPAN can slit your wrists by downloading and installing
>modules which do not work under MacOS, replacing ported modules which
>_did_ work.  CPAN.pm currently cannot identify when this is happening,
>either to prevent or to warn.


Know thy software.

I can't get excited about this.  This can happen on *any* platform, 
not just MacOS.  CPAN can easily replace a working version of 
software with a newer version that passes the tests but doesn't work. 
And it's not just Perl.  This can happen (and has happened to me) 
with almost any piece of software.

There are three major things either ongoing or that will happen this 
year that will conceivably change your perceptions of this problem. 
First, the ongoing and almost always successful efforts to get 
author's of the major modules to include MacPerl patches.  MacPerl 
users should be encouraged to provide feedback and patches to the 
authors, who these days are almost always receptive.  Second, 
Matthias will release 5.6, and I believe he still plans to get his 
patches rolled back into the Perl core distribution, so the stuff 
included in the core will no longer be "ports" in the sense you mean 
(i.e. if you replace them from the standard distribution, they'll 
still work).  Third, MacOS X will come out, and change everything. 
(But of course,  not on older machines.)

If after all these changes you still think there's a problem, then 
maybe we should do something.  Personally I think that it'd be wasted 
effort at this time.

>
>--
>MattLangford

--
Paul Schinder
schinder@pobox.com

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