On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 03:00:23AM +1100, Brendan O'Dea wrote: > The reason that we have package maintainers is because the process of > packaging a large set of disparate software into a coherent whole > [distribution] requires both elements of discrimination of > communication with other maintainers such that all this mess of > packages works together. Moreover that discrimination includes > deciding whether or not something SHOULD be packaged. CPAN is a > wonderful resource, but you can't possibly tell me that ALL of it is > useful.
Besides that, you must notice that bits and pieces of CPAN conflict with other bits and pieces of CPAN. E.g. some version of DBD::AnyData simply doesn't work with some version of SQL::Parser (or was it SQL::Statement?). Point is, the metadata available on CPAN is generally not well maintained or not up to date or just plain wrong. CPAN contains packages which conflict with each other at the namespace level (I forget, but I ran into this not long ago: two modules providing the same methods in the same namespace with different functionality!) Ideally this would be solved by fixing and expanding the metadata. In reality you have interactions with bits and pieces not found in CPAN. Think about messes like Berkley's DB or libpng. Packaging is a part of maintenance, but maintenance is not just packaging. > For my own purposes, I'll only package a module if it is either > > * a dependency of another package I'm building, or > * is generally useful Agreed. I have many Perl modules packaged as debs because it's convenient for me, but I don't see them as generally useful. Marcelo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
