My Mac Depends on Perl?!

I just realized something today … my Mac depends on Perl. I mean, in a way, it just boggles the mind. Perl seems to be the exact antithesis of the Way … the Mac Way anyway.

My discovery started innocently enough. I decided I was going to upgrade the Perl that comes from Apple from 5.6 to 5.8. I am not exactly sure what I did, but I didn't build it right, and even though some tests failed, I installed it anyway. I know, I know, stoopid. But sometimes we just have to hurt ourselves when no one else will.

With Perl dead, lots of programs started dying. Of course, I assume that all of my unixy programs from Fink would die, and they did. But other macy programs started dying as well.

I kinda just wanted to go back to the way things were, as the Perl supplied by Apple seemed to work well enough (it is just a couple years old), so I downloaded one of the upgrade kits from Apple thinking that it might just have a new version of Perl that it would patch.

Behold, the Mac OS X installation program depends on Perl! I'm stunned. I wouldn't have believed it four years ago.

Anyway, I'm downloading a new version now from the good folks at Server Logistics, and I'm sure I'll be up and running in no time … wait a minute. Maybe this installation program will depend on Perl?

<sigh>Maybe I better download the source. </sigh>

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