Re: rawhide report: 20040903 changes

[Alan Cox <alan redhat com>]

On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 01:59:36PM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> >Did the policy on no perl in RPM pre/post install scripts change?
> 
> What policy?

The "no perl" policy. We certainly used to have one. Part of the problem is
that perl is *huge* and causes dependancy loops. Another part is that the
perl syntax varies by release [until we get perl6]. That means a perl scriptlet
might get run by something quite different.

> That may be so, but it is impossible to install a modern Red Hat 
> OS without installing perl.  Since perl is guaranteed to be 

Nope. I do it for all my firewalls. rpm -e perl is the highlight of the
install experience ;)

> for ages now.  I've even considered making all of the rpm scripts 
> pure perl by using #!/usr/bin/perl shebangs.  ;o)

/usb/bin/perl5 ??

> The perl code present now, replaces some very ugly sed code which 
> used temporary files.  I see no compelling technical reason to 
> not use perl.

To quote a former employee:
	 "We don't like it, it's perl"
                -Trond Eivind Glomsr