[tpm] will a pre-built (for Solaris 10) perl distribution work on Solaris 8?

[Stuart Watt]

On 2012-07-16, at 1:39 PM, Fulko Hew wrote:

> 'pay for it!'  That's when people pipe up and say 'See... Perl is old and unsupportable,
> you should have used Java'.  And the fact that the box would have an un-usable/old version
> of Java would be lost on them too!

I know what you mean, but this is just ActiveState doing what ActiveState do. The reality is, if we'd grabbed a copy of the installer when it was free, it wouldn't be a problem using it today. They're basically making you pay because they can. 

The reality is: compiling the most recent Perl for Solaris 8 should not be a problem. It will work, and it will be stable. Putting a new binary on an old system - unless it was compiled for that old system - is usually inviting trouble in for a nice cup of tea. It doesn't matter a damn whether it's Java, Perl, or even PHP. 

And Java is the precisely the same. If you compiled a Java app today, no way would it run on a 2000-era Java runtime, unless you fiddled the defaults to make it extra backwards compatible. I'm already getting hassle for deploying with OpenJDK 6 when it still is supported, because it is supposed to be dropped within the next 18 months or so by Debian. 

All the best
Stuart