[Rd] Solution to (well known) problem with Rdconv.pm on Sun Solaris (PR#1093)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 15 Sep 2001 hb@maths.lth.se wrote:

> Full_Name: Henrik Bengtsson
> Version: 1.3.1
> OS: Sun Solaris 8
> Submission from: (NULL) (130.235.3.49)
>
>
> I have been trying to install [R] v1.3.1 locally on a Sun Solaris 8 machine and
> I ran into the (already known) perl problems that express theselves as:

[...]

> My suggestion is to add this to Rdconv.pm at the 5 lines above. This would make
> the building of [R] a little bit easier.
>
>
> Perl version used:
>
> "This is perl, version 5.003 with EMBED built under solaris at Sep 14 1996
                                                                        ^^^^
> 22:39:00 + suidperl security patch".

It was a bug in one version of perl around five years ago.  Incidentally,
it must have been built under a much older version of Solaris (as I recall
2.6 came out in 1998: certainly we first used it in late 1998), and
we find it is a good idea to rebuild perl at Solaris upgrades, especially
upgrading from 2.5.x.

We don't know (and don't have the resources to check) if the changed
version works on all more recent perl versions in use by R installers.

I do believe the solution is well-known: use perl 5.005, 5.6.0 or
(preferably) 5.6.1.  Perhaps we should test for perl >= 5.005?

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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