> From: Bruce Dubbs <[email protected]>
> Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2016 14:29:00 -0500
> Subject: Re: [blfs-dev] Perl modules
>
> Ken Moffat wrote:
> > I'm still working out the deps for the new version of biber - I have
> > them all now (more than 100 _plus_ LWP), including those needed at
> > runtime and for testing, it's just a question of which (minor)
> > dependencies need which other minor dependencies.  At a guess,
> > probably no more than 5 levels of dependencies.  And I'm not
> > bothering to separate runtime deps.
> >
> > And some of the (many) perl module developers are less reliable than
> > others - frequent new releases, sometimes severely changing the
> > dependencies.
> >
> > What we have been doing is to only list versions for the top-level
> > dependencies needed elsewhere in the book.  The advantage of that is
> > that we don't fill up the comparison report with random new versions
> > of some minor depen dency.  The downside is that any random change
> > can alter the dependencies (that happened to me in the past week,
> > took me ages to find out what was going on).  And if/when that
> > happens, the listed dependencies become incorrect.
> >
> > I'm increasingly thinking that we ought to list the version used for
> > each dependency - and to NOT automatically check for new versions
> > until either we are heading for a release, or until a package which
> > uses something has a new release which needs a later version (biber
> > tends to be good at that).
> >
> > The other problem with the perl modules page is that it is long and
> > deep.  Using versioned entities for everything would solve the
> > depth (only one level of dependency per module) but probably increase
> > the page length by at least two orders of magnitude.
> >
> > Igor's fork of the book was mentioned this week - He has moved his
> > (three) modules into a separate chapter - although I think he is
> > missing some dependencies for the one I looked at ;-)  A separate
> > chapter sounds like the way to go.  Omitting texlive, and therefore
> > biber, obviously has benefits.
> >
> > Changing this would be a major and protracted effort.  I think
> > *something* needs to be done, but my initial change to add
> > unversioned entities for dependencies doesn't look as if it will
> > help as much as I had hoped.  And to be honest, if it wasn't for the
> > pain caused by editing the biber deps I would much prefer to do more
> > interesting things such as bringing TTF/OTF fonts under control.
> >
> > I saw that DJ added some modules without dependencies this week : if
> > you are reading this, how did you find the experience ?
> >
> > Any alternative views ?
> >
> > For the meantime I'm still working through the biber deps, that
> > will take some time and then I'll put them into the CURRENT page
> > (versioned entities for top-level deps, unversioned entities where
> > used by more than one other module).
>
> My understanding is that the issue at hand is due to biblatex-biber.  I am 
> not in favor of a massive increase in the perl modules page to just 
> accommodate one relatively minor package.
>
> I think a section in biblatex-biber discussing the issue and suggesting 
> using cpan for the biber required modules would be sufficient.
>
> Another option is to just drop the biblatex-biber portion of the book.  If 
> a user needs it, there is always install-tl-unx.  Adding a huge tail of 
> dependencies is really only needed for biber developers.
>
> If it is dropped, it can be supplemented by a hint that does not need to 
> be updated every time a perl module is updated.
>


More-or-less ditto. Ken's note reads like some form of self-harming
lost-sight-of-the-woods-for-the-tress really-need-to-stand-back-a-bit
insanity: I would recommend strongly to use/track/include only
(reasonably-)sanely-behaved software/dev practices.


At the very most, perhaps include a 'perl modules reqd for *tex*'
page in the tex section; and if nec reference the main current general
perl-modules page.



rgds,
akh





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