[ic] Red Hat 9 workaround

[Mike Heins]

Dear All,

I did some investigation of the Red Hat 9 Perl, and found:

        1. They have been applying patches as posted to the maintenance
           group, with no apparent testing. I believe the perl-porters
           would be appalled at this behavior.

        2. The Perl as distributed doesn't generate Makefile properly
           for several modules, whereas the stock perl does.

        3. While the perl core has very recent, experimental, non-release
           code in it, the versions of modules Red Hat builds are
           generally out of date, sometimes woefully so.

        4. The Perl as distributed has no chance to run Interchange
           properly. Mostly this is not due to the threads implementation
           per se, it is due to core dumps in XS modules.

I produced an image of a Red Hat 9 perl that is built:

        1. With the standard release 5.8.0 perl core code, no
           threads or suidperl.

        2. All of Bundle::InterchangeKitchenSink (a superset
           of Bundle::Interchange) and almost all of the extra
           modules Red Hat provides in RPM. (Only two Japanese
           language modules are not included, because they would
           not build.)

        3. Includes /usr/lib/libperl.so so that the release Vim
           will work properly.

        4. Includes both DBD::mysql and DBD::Pg.

It works fine for me, though you should use at your own risk. The worst
that could happen is you have to run the uninstall.sh script or otherwise
re-install the stock Perl RPMS.

Download the tar ball from one of:

    http://ftp.icdevgroup.org/perl/RHL-9/perl-kitchensink-5.8.0-rh9.tar.gz
    ftp://ftp.icdevgroup.org/pub/perl/RHL-9/perl-kitchensink-5.8.0-rh9.tar.gz

There is a README and a cheesy install.sh script.

Best,
Mike
-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. -- Dick Feynman