TroubleInstallPerl

Symptom

When running the installation script, everything is fine until it checks for the presence of perl:

2. Perl 5 location :
   [no default] >

at which point it hangs and doesn't accept a value like /usr/bin/perl.

Background

It all has to do with the fact, that newer version of Perl report their version in a different way. Perl has a tendency to do this differently with every 5.X version that is released ... why? No idea, but very inconvenient.

Workaround

There is a possible workaround that goes like this:

• create a dummy wrapper script (e.g. /tmp/dummyperl) that contains the two lines

#!/bin/sh
echo "This is perl, v5.12"

• make this executable (chmod +x /tmp/dummyperl)

• when the installation hits that WARNING it will wait for a user input. Just give

/tmp/dummyperl

• after installation is finished, replace the BDG_perl= line in all $BDG_home/machines/*/host.setup files (there probably is only one) with the correct /usr/bin/perl value again.

Then you will have fooled the installation routine but the final program should still run.

You also want to change the $BDG_home/adm/bin/newuser script:

< $BDG_perl -v | grep -c "This is perl, v5." 1> /dev/null 2>&1
< if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
<   $BDG_perl -v | grep -c "This is perl, version 5." 1> /dev/null 2>&1
<   [ $? -ne 0 ] && error "unable to find perl 5 "
< fi
---
> $BDG_perl -v | grep "This is perl" | grep -cE "v5|version 5|perl 5" 1> /dev/null 2>&1
> [ $? -ne 0 ] && error "unable to find perl 5 "