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Apple's Mac OS X Update Breaks Perl
mir writes "It looks like if you use CPAN to install modules, Apple's latest security update might just have broken your Perl. According to Tatsuhiko Miyagawa 'The Security Update brings (old) IO.bundle with version 1.22 but your IO.pm has been updated to the latest 1.23 on CPAN shell. (But hey, 1.23 was released in 2006...Why do you bring that ancient version back, Apple!?)'."
Why are Apple's updater and Perl's CPAN shell both trying to update the same file? If the file's there as part of the Apple OS then only the OS's package manager should touch it, and Perl should leave it alone (installing its own version in /usr/local if necessary). It's exactly the same on Linux distributions: the CPAN shell doesn't try to mess with the system perl which is updated using rpm or dpkg.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Some would argue that Perl has been broken for a long time before Apple started meddling!
It's an XS module: They include components that are written in a language other than Perl, and have to be compiled against perl.
Which means that if the perl binary they are pointing to changes, they break. The code itself is fine: You just need to recompile.
Apple helpfully recompiled all the ones they shipped, so they would work. The only problem is for people who updated the modules that Apple shipped: They now have a miss-match between the Perl code that is running (that they updated) and the code that is compiled (that Apple shipped).
Basically, you've got a library header and the library object. If the header and the object don't match exactly, you've got problems. No interface was changed, no major important pieces were changed, but now you've got 1.23 headers and a 1.22 object. Change one or the other, and everything will be fine again.
Right. Let's see... Quicktime still works but the Sims 2 doesn't. Quicktime doesn't seem to break anything else, so logically, it MUST be Apple's fault. I think the rest of the Quicktime users who aren't playing the Sims 2 would disagree with your placement of blame. :)
Brainwashed much? You're basically implying that if I hit you in the head with a hammer and you're knocked out, but the hammer, nearby mailbox, and tree are unharmed, that proves that the hammer isn't to blame - your head is.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
As an XServe administrator, Apple's cryptic security updates are really starting to get on my nerves.
You would expect that, since it is based on multiple open-source projects that are freely available, Apple would push compiled updates through Software Update to its OS X Server users. Instead, they wait so long to patch things (like Amavis or the BIND patch for Dan Kaminsky's DNS bug) that I just get frustrated and apply the patch myself. Then, when a Apple Software Update does come down the pipe, I have to consider if installing it will break my configuration and land me in hot water with my boss when he can't get his e-mail anymore.
Apple needs to decide if they're going to regularly and consistently update the open-source software that their Server OS runs. If not, leave it alone and let the users apply and configure updates. This wishy-washy, middle-ground, Jobsy-come-lately approach is just an annoyance and an inconvenience.
Oh, I see. I was under the impression that the phrase "It just works" was a synonym for something like "It simply works". Apparently it is a synonym for "It barely works".
OK, that was a bit unfair. Every OS gets the occasional problem when doing updates. Assuming that there is a forthcoming fix in the near future, there is no need to obsess about it.
This is a classic problem with most *nix distribution packages and CPAN usage. This is not Apple specific.
With MacPorts you can provide a keyword before installing to see what options an install might have.
So for instance, for apache2 you might type:
port install apache2
to install. Before doing this, try:
port variants apache2
This should produce a list. Hopefully X11 is in there (I can't verify right now). Anyway, find any options you want to enable or disable, and reform your install to look like this:
port install apache2 +enable_option -disable_option
This will usually let you strip away a goofy dep like X11 from programs that don't really need it.
For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!