* David Wheeler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-07-16 23:53]: > > Debian's package manager does something different. A package > > can belong to a 'virtual package'. For example there is a > > virtual package for email-client. Any package that belongs to > > the virtual package email-client would satisfy the dependency > > of another package that depends on the that virtual package. > > Hrm. That's not a bad idea. Not sure how that'd work with CPAN, > though.
I don't think it can. Take the virtual package mail-transport-agent as an example, a dependency on which can be satisfied by exim, or postfix, or sendmail, or what have you. This works because all MTAs have a very similar interface. In other cases, a standard interface can be defined by Debian and wrapper scripts or some such can be written by the respective package maintainers. This is not at all comparable to the situation on CPAN. You can't just s/XML::Parser/XML::LibXML/g f.ex and expect it to work. Modules must be written to the interface of the module they use, and if they can pick from one of several alternatives, they have to be written towards all of these. So I don't think there's a place for virtual distributions in the CPAN. The right approach is to explicitly state which alternative dependencies a module can use. Regards, -- Aristotle "If you can't laugh at yourself, you don't take life seriously enough."
