[oi-dev] [HEADSUP] /usr/perl5/bin/perl was switched to perl-516

[Alexander Pyhalov]

Hello.
To reduce costs of supporting multiple perl versions we are reducing 
Perl 5.10 support in OpenIndiana Hipster.

This mostly affects people, compiling illumos-gate on /hipster.
Also it can affect you if you have 
runtime/perl-516/module/sun-solaris at 5.11* installed. If you have this 
package installed (and this can happen only if you have installed it by 
hands), please, uninstall this package before updating (so that 
runtime/perl-516/module/sun-solaris at 0.5.11 can be installed).

If you compiled your perl modules for perl 5.16, possibly you have to 
recompile them. New perl 5.16 version was compiled without 
-Dperl_static_inline="static" flag to avoid creating one more patch for 
illumos-gate (this can affect perl ABI).

We have two perl versions - Perl 5.10 and Perl 5.16. If you haven't 
changed perl mediator, your /usr/bin/perl should be Perl 5.16 for about 
a year.

Now we have marked obsolete most of the perl-510 modules. There are 
several modules which are not obsolete now and will stay as is for some 
time to allow you compile unmodified illumos-gate. These are
runtime/perl-510
runtime/perl-510/extra
runtime/perl-510/module/sun-solaris
library/perl-5/xml-simple-5100

This should be enough to compile illumos-gate. However, we will not 
provide any updates to these packages and are going to drop them as soon 
as illumos-gate officially bumps required perl version.

You can build unmodified illumos-gate version on updated /hipster. 
However, if you install runtime/perl-510/module/sun-solaris from 
unmodified illumos-gate, system services (like intrd) are likely to 
continue using runtime/perl-516/module/sun-solaris from /hipster.

To facilitate building of unmodified illumos-gate new mediator 
"system-perl" was introduced. If you want to use perl 5.10 as system 
perl just set this mediator to 5.10. This will make possible for system 
services to use runtime/perl-510/module/sun-solaris from unmodified 
illumos-gate build.

If you want to  build modified illumos-gate as used by /hipster, you 
should add to your illumos.sh

export PERL_VERSION="5.16";
export PERL_PKGVERS="-516";

and add -DPERL_EUPXS_ALWAYS_EXPORT to PCFLAGS in 
usr/src/cmd/perl/Makefile.targ (look at 
https://github.com/OpenIndiana/oi-userland/tree/oi/hipster/components/illumos/illumos-gate). 


Also note, that patching capability was added to illumos-gate 
oi-userland component. So, if you want to build illumos-gate with 
specific patches, just drop them to 
components/illumos/illumos-gate/patches directory.
This doesn't mean that we are going to add additional patches to 
oi-userland illumos-gate version. This will be done only for small 
packaging-related patches.

-- 
Best regards,
Alexander Pyhalov,
system administrator of Computer Center of Southern Federal University