make it easier to set custom Perl library paths

[price]

Anders wrote a while ago:

I talked with presbrey on Monday about his r403 (make suexec pass through PYTHONPATH and PERL5LIB), which I reverted for security concerns. The goal is to make it easier to use locally installed Python or Perl libraries, without having to mess with sys.path or @INC in every script. We came up with one possible solution, which is to have suexec pass PYTHONPATH and PERL5LIB after sanitizing them to make sure they only point to paths in the user's locker.

I came up with an alternative solution for Python that involves significantly less work: I put the line

import site, os.path; site.addsitedir(os.path.expanduser("~/lib/python2.5/site-packages"))

in /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/00scripts-home.pth. ecprice and I are going to try out this strategy with the HMMT server.

I don't know of a similar mechanism for Perl, though.

Was ​https://help.mit.edu/?q=497718.

[adehnert]

Since 00scripts-home.pth is now on the deployed servers, I assume it ended up working out...

[andersk]

I don’t know of a similar mechanism for Perl, though.

[broder]

Could you use sitecustomize.pl for Perl? See also <​http://debathena.mit.edu/trac/ticket/228>

It's not enabled by default in Ubuntu. I don't know if it is for Fedora, or if you'd be willing to build it yourselves if it's not.

[adehnert]

AIUI, this is fixed for Python.

[adehnert]

Nobody's cared enough to fix this for Perl in the last five years. WONTFIXing on the theory that clearly there aren't enough Perl devs for this to be a practical issue. Feel free to reopen if that changes.