Should we have programs with executable permissions in the distro

[James E Keenan]

Gerd Pokorra wrote:
> Changing the first line of files which starts with "#! perl" would be
> nice.
>
> Does it have any disadvantage to set it from "#! perl" to
> "#!/usr/bin/perl"?
>
> Also: "#! parrot"  ->   "#!/usr/bin/parrot"\\

I would oppose both of those.  Whenever a new version of Perl 5 comes 
out, I build it from source.  By default, it gets installed as 
/usr/local/bin/perl.  So I wouldn't want any Perl 5 program in the 
distro to have such a hard-coded shebang line.

And, as for /usr/bin/parrot:  I see that Rakudo Star by default installs 
its parrot underneath the directory where the tarball is processed. 
Given how unstable parrot and rakudo are expected to be in the medium 
term, I think that's an appropriate choice.  Let people who want to have 
parrot under /usr/bin/ or (better) /usr/local/bin/ explicitly request that.

But, Gerd, what do you think about the permissions, as distinct from the 
shebang lines?

(Me, I'm leaning toward 0644.)

Thank you very much.
kid51