tools/install-dist.pl is a perl 6 script but has Prolog file extension

[AlexDaniel]

See these commits:

• ade7c46
• 98e575d
• b7df58f
• efd0d6c

We are now consistently using .pm6 for modules and .p6 for scripts, except for tools/install-dist.pl file which is a perl 6 script but confusingly it has a .pl extension.

Renaming it is easy, but I'm suspecting that changing it may break some things outside of the rakudo repo. Any ideas on what is affected exactly?

[niner]

Distro packages certainly reference the script. E.g. https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/devel:languages:perl6/rakudo/rakudo.spec?expand=1 line 50

[CurtTilmes]

Alpine distro uses it to install zef but easy enough to update with next release.

[AlexDaniel]

@stmuk @robertlemmen @ugexe @nxadm install-dist.pl was just renamed to install-dist.p6 in a PR for #2077 and that went unnoticed by me. Is this affecting you by any chance? I'd say we should leave the rename in there, but what exactly can break and what should we fix now?

[stmuk]

@AlexDaniel This shouldn't affect star since I use zef to install itself but I think there are upstream packagers who use it or at least some did ask on IRC about using it (maybe Debian/pkgsrc)? It means packagers can install modules using base rakudo without zef

A quick search on http://colabti.org/irclogger/irclogger_log/perl6?date=2018-06-05#l340 suggests arch maybe use it as well?

Maybe we could revert this change but warn to stderr that the name will change?

[robertlemmen]

I think we also rename it during the installation into the package...

in any case, we will pick up any new name when we pick up a new version. Is .p6 the common extension perl perl 6 though? I see mostly .pl6...

[AlexDaniel]

@robertlemmen That was discussed to death in Raku/doc#778. Basically, the situation is that for perl 6 scripts:

• .p6 is preferred
• .pl6 is acceptable
• .pl is discouraged

Other extensions mentioned by the docs:

Source files generally use the .pm6 extension, and scripts or executables use the .p6. Test files use the .t extension. Files which contain documentation use the .pod6 extension.

[robertlemmen]

great!

[niner]

This means that I will have to update rakudo's spec file for openSUSE for the next release. Other than that we should be fine as the script is installed as /usr/share/perl6/bin/install-perl6-dist anyway and that is what is used in module .spec files.

[nxadm]

Other extensions mentioned by the docs:
>Source files generally use the .pm6 extension, and scripts or executables use the .p6. Test files use the .t extension. Files which contain documentation use the .pod6 extension.

The question is: should we have a .t6 extension?

[AlexDaniel]

The file was renamed, nothing left to do in this ticket. I self-assigned because maybe I'd issue an alert if this change is included in the release (the release can take some more days though).

@nxadm I think it's a good question, please open a new ticket for that. No one is using .t6 yet, so it's not going to be easy. But for this ticket it's off-topic.

[AlexDaniel]

It will be mentioned in the changelog, no alert needed (I think).