Re: Can git choose perl at runtime?

> I recently submitted my first patch using OSX and found the experience
> frustrating, for reasons that have come up on the list before,
> concerning git-send-email and perl dependencies that you need to be
> root to update.
> 
> Last seen here:
> https://public-inbox.org/git/878t55qga6.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com/
> 
> The struggle is that Mac's package manager Homebrew has opted,
> apparently with some finality, to no longer support linking to a user
> perl at build time. PERL_PATH is hard-coded to link to the system
> perl, which means the user needs sudo to install the SSL libraries
> required for send-email. So for send-email to work, you need to either
> sudo cpan or build git yourself. The obvious solution here would be to
> do /usr/bin/env perl, but in the above message Aevar pointed out
> pitfalls with that.
> 
> It seems that choosing perl at compile time necessarily comes with
> tradeoffs. So I wonder if there is a way we can support choosing a
> perl at runtime without breaking the existing mechanism of linking to
> perl at compile time.
> 
> I'm picturing adding an executable "git-perl" to libexec that checks
> config core.perlPath and envvar GIT_PERL_PATH, in some order. Having
> chosen one of these or the build-time PERL_PATH as a last resort, it
> exec's the correct perl executable.
> 
> Then relevant scripts (e.g. git-add--interactive, git-send-email)
> invoke git-perl instead of /usr/bin/perl, and the makefile no longer
> replaces that with PERL_PATH -- instead that will be used at runtime
> via git-perl when we can be sure the user does not explicitly prefer
> something different.