Editing Portal:FreeBSD,OpenBSD,etc (section)

=== OpenBSD development process and Perl ===

OpenBSD’s Perl work follows the larger OpenBSD development model. OpenBSD is developed primarily through CVS, with public read-only Git mirrors. The OpenBSD source mirror on GitHub describes itself as a read-only conversion of the official CVS source repository and explicitly says that pull requests are not accepted; diffs should be sent to the `tech@` mailing list.<ref>OpenBSD Project, “openbsd/src,” GitHub mirror, https://github.com/openbsd/src, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

That applies to Perl-related base-system work as well. Perl in OpenBSD is not upgraded by a user running CPAN over the system interpreter. It is imported, patched, tested, and committed as part of the OpenBSD source tree.

OpenBSD release notes also describe Perl as an outside component with local patches, showing the project’s normal approach to imported software: take an upstream component, patch it for OpenBSD’s needs, and maintain it as part of the system release.<ref>OpenBSD Project, “OpenBSD 7.8,” https://www.openbsd.org/78.html, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

The OpenBSD package-tool maintainers continue to discuss Perl actively. In a 2023 message summarized by OpenBSD Journal, Marc Espie wrote about the future of `pkg_*`, testing, regression infrastructure, and converting package-tool code to Perl 5.36, specifically mentioning that signatures made the Perl code more readable and easier for new people to enter.<ref>OpenBSD Journal, “pkg_*: the road forward,” https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230712135010, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

This illustrates the OpenBSD attitude toward Perl: conservative, integrated, pragmatic, and focused on maintainability. Perl is kept because it solves problems inside the system.