Injected /usr/bin/perl5.30 breaks in macOS 15 Sequoia

[timparenti]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.4.20
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 47ef1a3b0b742a78be35c016df6a0279d6035ebb
Last commit: 11 days ago
Branch: stable
Core tap JSON: 13 Feb 19:41 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 13 Feb 19:41 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 10
Homebrew Ruby: 3.3.7 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.3.7/bin/ruby
CPU: deca-core 64-bit arm_blizzard_avalanche
Clang: 16.0.0 build 1600
Git: 2.39.5 => /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 15.3-arm64
CLT: 16.2.0.0.1.1733547573
Xcode: 16.2
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
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Warning: Some installed formulae are deprecated or disabled.
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Description of issue

Around the time I recently upgraded from macOS 14 Sonoma to macOS 15 Sequoia, I found that I started to get a missing Perl error when attempting to use the rename package:

% rename -s foo bar foo
zsh: /opt/homebrew/bin/rename: bad interpreter: /usr/bin/perl5.30: no such file or directory

The original source doesn't specify an explicit Perl, but my installed copy at /opt/homebrew/Cellar/rename/1.601/bin/rename appeared to have replaced this #!/usr/bin/env perl by injecting an explicit #!/usr/bin/perl5.30. This was supported by "preferred_perl": "5.30" being present in the associated INSTALL_RECEIPT.json dated 2023-12-03 when I first installed the package and was still using macOS 13 Ventura.

There have been no new releases of the package since I first installed it; it has been stable at version 1.601 since 2019-08-30. Meanwhile, https://www.cpan.org/ports/binaries.html#macos lists that Perl 5.30 shipped with macOS 11 through 14, but now on macOS 15 only Perl 5.34 is available:

% ls /usr/bin/perl*
/usr/bin/perl           /usr/bin/perldoc        /usr/bin/perlthanks
/usr/bin/perl5.34       /usr/bin/perldoc5.34    /usr/bin/perlthanks5.34
/usr/bin/perlbug        /usr/bin/perlivp
/usr/bin/perlbug5.34    /usr/bin/perlivp5.34

I do regularly run brew update ; brew upgrade as a matter of routine and am keenly aware of the particular need to do so following a major OS upgrade. However, I would have expected brew upgrade to notice and correct this broken dependency on an outdated OS Perl without further intervention.

After some searching, I came across brew reinstall, separate from brew install, which resolved my proximal problem with the package, but now #!/usr/bin/perl5.34 has been injected into my local copy of the package, so the broader issue likely remains.

Cc: @colindean

[Bo98]

This is a known issue with rarely-updated packages (or if you skip from macOS 13 -> 15). We prepared for this in macOS 14 by pointing to perl5.34 (while still supporting perl5.30), but it seems you've hit a case where you've skipped that transition period from a seldomly-updated package. brew reinstall is indeed the way to fix this for now.

[timparenti]

Thank you for the information. Where can I find and track progress on this known issue?

[timparenti]

@Bo98 Just checking in again on where this issue is currently tracked. I appreciate this is a bit of a corner-case, especially as it pertains to Perl, but the more general case of a seldom-updated package skipping an annually-released OS version seems like it would be somewhat more prevalent.

[Bo98]

It was covered generally in Homebrew/brew#10127. It was low priority as it was quite rare that it's reported as an issue.

This is the first time I've heard about anyone having a Perl-related issue in a quite a while now, helped in part because Perl versions only change every few years but also because of our forward planning of Perl versions this time round (compared to last time where it affected everyone/everything)

There's some work in making Perl builds more reproducible (Homebrew/brew#19174) which in turn may help improve this by allowing us to use /usr/bin/perl (instead of perl5.XX) for the cases where we detect the builds are identical between say 5.30 and 5.34 (i.e. all-tagged bottles). It seems likely this approach would fix the rename example you reported.

[timparenti]

Thanks. I see that the shebang rewriting for Perl came out of Homebrew/brew#11227 and Homebrew/brew#11275, which stemmed from Homebrew/brew#10127 (comment).

I also see that Homebrew/homebrew-core#191352 is the broader effort to improve coverage of all-tagged bottles.