[Koha-devel] Inconsistent Perl shebangs (new coding guideline?)

[Fridolin SOMERS]

+1

Whould be nice for non-Debian OS possibility, and multi-perl installs.

On 13/10/2020 01:19, dcook at prosentient.com.au wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I was looking at “Bug 20582 - Turn Koha into a Mojolicious application” 
> when I noticed that some of the scripts were using “#!/usr/bin/env perl” 
> instead of “#!/usr/bin/perl”. While there is no requirement in the 
> Coding Guidelines to use “#!/usr/bin/perl”, I thought it would be best 
> for all our Perl scripts to be consistent.
> 
> However, now I’m weighing up the options.
> 
> Conceptually, using “#!/usr/bin/env perl” means that we can use 
> perlbrew/plenv (or manually provide a different Perl in our $PATH) when 
> running these scripts, so that we don’t have to use the system Perl 
> located at /usr/bin/perl.
> 
> That said, I was concerned about how most CGI scripts have 
> “#!/usr/bin/perl” in them and the implications that might have if we 
> invoked Starman/Morbo/Hypnotoad with a different Perl, but looking at 
> Plack::App::CGIBin, CGI::Emulate::PSGI, Plack::App::WrapCGI, 
> CGI::Compile, and Koha::App::Plugin::CGIBinKoha makes me think that the 
> shebang in CGI scripts is ignored when using these Perl application 
> servers, since they’re just read as Perl code and not handed to the 
> exec() family of kernel syscalls.
> 
> Starman/Morbo/Hypnotoad have been installed with /usr/bin/perl shebangs, 
> so they’ll use the system Perl by default, but I think if they were 
> installed using plenv and Carton for instance that they’d have their 
> shebangs rewritten appropriately. We could also invoke 
> Starman/Morbo/Hypnotoad with the version of Perl that we desire.
> 
> So ultimately… I suppose the most reasonable thing to do is probably to 
> mandate “#!/usr/bin/perl” for all Koha Perl scripts? If someone does 
> want to use a different Perl, I suppose the onus is on them to make sure 
> they execute Koha Perl scripts with a different Perl binary?
> 
> Also, do people think there is a point in repairing existing Koha Perl 
> scripts that have ‘#!/usr/bin/env perl’ instead of ‘#!/usr/bin/perl’?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> David Cook
> 
> Software Engineer
> 
> Prosentient Systems
> 
> 72/330 Wattle St
> 
> Ultimo, NSW 2007
> 
> Australia
> 
> Office: 02 9212 0899
> 
> Online: 02 8005 0595
> 
> 
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-- 
Fridolin SOMERS <fridolin.somers at biblibre.com>
Software and system maintainer 🦄
BibLibre, France