There certainly are some issues with incorporating Perl into the Linux Standard Base. However, it really should be done. Maybe it is just my biased viewpoint, but I think this requires give and take on both sides.

Perl as a language is a strange beast. It does whatever it does, and that may change highly between versions. In this way it doesn't lend itself at all to be standarized. Additionally, the most up-to-date specification of Perl (If you could call it that) is the documentation behind Perl 6. We are certainly not in a position currently to standardize support for Perl 6.

This leads to the conclusion that it isn't really the language, Perl, that is currently a de facto Linux standard. It's the application, perl, which is commonly used. In the Linux world, perl is everywhere, and any programmer can make a reasonable expectation to find perl 5.8 on a new system as released by the distribution designers. In this way, perl belongs to the "Commands and Utilities" section of the LSB, as listed here: http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/toccommand.html

After that outlook on perl, in relation to the LSB, has been established, the details are easy. Beyond having support for all the basic aspects of the Perl language, core modules need to be installed, and a language specification isn't needed. Basically what I mean to say in my humble, practical opinion, is that not much more is needed to pass realistic standards than having a modern /usr/bin/perl (5.8, heck, 5.6!) and core modules somewhere.

Just my two cents.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.