Re: [Fink-beginners] Fink and non-system Perl

[Alexander H. <ale...@gm...>]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Daniel Drennan
<dan...@ja...> wrote:
> I should rephrase: I'm happy with fink, and appreciate above all the help here. Especially after trying MacPorts, which basically assumes User status and hijacks ownership of applications....
>
> I think actually the problem is CPAN, and the difference in starting out with a gcc 3 compiled base and trying to build on top of that/upgrade modules from there. So now I want to keep everything separated.
>
> I noticed that fink just "went with the flow" using the 5.8.6 perl. And this worked fine. But then eventually something wasn't right; again, likely on the CPAN side. Maybe I'm just not able to get a synergy between CPAN and fink going....
>
> In any event I noticed in Fink Commander an option in preferences to "point to Perl" by establishing a path to the desired Perl, but I couldn't get this to work (no dialogue box comes up). I didn't notice this in any documentation for command-line fink.
>
> So I guess that was more my question: I'm happy with fink, want to use it, but am wondering if it is possible to set it up from its installation onward to work with a Perl that I define, separate from the system Perl.
>
> Thanks as always!
>
> d.
>

There are two issues here:

1)  You can certainly hack all of the perl modules in
/sw/lib/perl5/Fink to have the "fink" tool use a different
interpreter, via their "#!" lines.  That's pretty easy.

I believe the Fink Commander Perl Interpreter Preference item does
something different, but to the same end.  I don't think it even
bothers with a dialogue, because it's a noninvasive process which
doesn't affect command-line operation.


2)  If you want "Fink", the distribution, to build modules against
your external Perl, you have to do a _lot_ more hacking.  As things
stand now, anything that wants perl-5.8.8 will install Fink's
"perl588", period; and anything that uses a built-in Perl instead of
Fink's will use Apple's perl-5.8.6, period.
-- 
Alexander K. Hansen
akh AT finkproject DOT org
Fink User Liaison and Documenter