Perl Path

[Bob Jones]

Thus spake --[ UxBoD ]--, with impeccable timing on 3/21/2007 4:37 AM:
> Hi,
> 
> I have just built a new server based on RHES4 and have built all the
> executables from source ie. perl, mysql, apache, php etc etc ...
> 
> When I built MailScanner I used the source and ran install.sh
> --perl=/usr/local/smartmail/bin/perl which installed all the modules
> fine. Though one thing I have noticed is that in the top of all the
> MailScanner code the perl path still points to /usr/bin/perl. I
> wondered why it wasn't working correctly ;)
> 
> Is it worth changing the install script so that if the --perl option
> is used then the perl binary path in all scripts is changed aswell ?
> 
> Thoughts?

I brought this up quite a while back (over a year ago I think) and no 
one really seemed to see an issue.  I'm in the situation where I can't 
just replace /usr/bin/perl with a symlink as I have things that depend 
on the OS provided perl that is there so I have to point to the 
different perl I install with.  What I end up doing is running a script 
that will go through each of the directories under /opt/Mailscanner and 
change any reference to /usr/bin/perl to the correct perl after every 
upgrade.  A pain, I know, but what can you do if people don't see the 
problem.

What has yet to be explained to me properly is if you are forced to use 
/usr/bin/perl to run Mailscanner, then why offer the option of 
specifying the perl path in the install script.  Just have it check that 
/usr/bin/perl is there and if not bomb out.  Don't pretend like you 
allow the user to specify the perl path and then really don't.

Bob