On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 08:48:25PM +0100, Stephen Quinney wrote: >I noticed today several new packages have appeared in sid which seem to >exactly or closely replicate those already available in the perl >package itself. I am wondering what the point of this is and whether >it is a good idea or not? In the past bugs have been submitted for the >removal of perl module packages that are replicating work done in the >main perl package. > >package name | perl | package >------------------|------------|-------- >libfile-spec-perl | 0.87 | 0.90 >libfile-temp-perl | 0.14 | 0.14 >libtext-wrap-perl | 2001.09291 | 2001.0929 > >Of these 3 only one of them seems justified and, to me, it would seem >better to request an update of the libfile-spec-perl within the perl >package rather than introduce another new package.
The right way to update modules in core is to create a new package rather than updating the perl package--Perl Policy specifically allows, and indeed encourages this (see �4.1). The recent 5.8.4-2.3 NMU of perl for MIME::Base64 would have been better achieved by uploading an updated libmime-base64-perl for example. Packaging core modules in this way does introduce maintenance issues: since dpkg doesn't support versioned depends, you will need to specify a dependency initially on "libfoo-perl (>= X)", and subsequently change that dependency to "perl (>= Y)" when a perl version is released which contains version X or newer of the Foo module. This is obviously an issue only when a specific version is required. Other packages which depend on "libfoo-perl" without a version are fine. Raphael: * There is no reason to have the .orig.tar.gz contain a copy of the upstream tarball rather than just *being* the upstream tarball. While this may be one interpretation of Debian policy's requirement that it "contain the source code from the upstream authors of the program", I don't believe (abominations such as DBS notwithstanding) that was the intention. * Your debian/rules is rather byzantine. Is there a reason why the rules suggested in Perl policy are inadequate? --bod -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
