Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 06:38:02AM +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote: Would this one be the same for the development (soon to be 9) version? http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os/repodata/ Yes, this is the development branch, aka rawhide, which will be made into Fedora 9. Are there similar repository for RedHat releases? ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Server/en/os/SRPMS/repodata ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/5Client/en/os/SRPMS/repodata These are the repositories for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the Server and Client variants. The repositories are src repositories, hope your script will not break on src's. -- Jan Pazdziora | adelton at #satellite*, #brno Satellite Engineering, Red Hat -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
Hi, about a month ago I wrote that I would like to improve the reporting on http://www.szabgab.com/distributions/ by including recent releases of Fedora. (and Red Hat as well) I asked on this list how can I get the list of all the packages included in Fedora N? Ralf has pointed me to some page: On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 9:26 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am using this script: --- snip --- #!/bin/sh owners=$(HOME)/src/fedora/local lftp \ -c get https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugzilla?tg_format=plain; \ -o $owners/owners.list.raw cat $owners/owners.list.raw | grep '^Fedora|' $owners/owners.fedora.list --- snip --- And grep'ed the generated owners.fedora.list: grep perl- owners.fedora.list Now I am here in Oslo, the QA Hackathon where I would like to work on this is going to start tomorrow evening so I started to look at this. The above page only gives me a list of perl package names. There is no version number of the perl packages and I don't know to witch version of Fedora and Red Hat do they belong to. I checked the source code of the code that is supposed to fetch the data and generate the reports and as I can see it is now trying to download the files from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/repodata/ There seem to be some xml files describing the modules and as I can see I have already written a partial parser for them http://search.cpan.org/dist/Parse-Fedora-Packages/ The problem is that they are only up to Fedora 6 and if I am right the latest is 8. So where is the data for the newer version? regards Gabor -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Thu, Apr 03, 2008 at 10:46:35PM +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote: Now I am here in Oslo, the QA Hackathon where I would like to work on this is going to start tomorrow evening so I started to look at this. The above page only gives me a list of perl package names. There is no version number of the perl packages and I don't know to witch version of Fedora and Red Hat do they belong to. I checked the source code of the code that is supposed to fetch the data and generate the reports and as I can see it is now trying to download the files from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/repodata/ There seem to be some xml files describing the modules and as I can see I have already written a partial parser for them http://search.cpan.org/dist/Parse-Fedora-Packages/ The problem is that they are only up to Fedora 6 and if I am right the latest is 8. So where is the data for the newer version? The repo at http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/os/repodata/ is probably what you are looking for, for Fedora 8. For updates (released since Fedora 8 GA), the repo at http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386/repodata/ can be used. I hope I'm answering the question you are asking, ;-) -- Jan Pazdziora | adelton at #satellite*, #brno Satellite Engineering, Red Hat -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 11:19 PM, Jan Pazdziora [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Apr 03, 2008 at 10:46:35PM +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote: Now I am here in Oslo, the QA Hackathon where I would like to work on this is going to start tomorrow evening so I started to look at this. The above page only gives me a list of perl package names. There is no version number of the perl packages and I don't know to witch version of Fedora and Red Hat do they belong to. I checked the source code of the code that is supposed to fetch the data and generate the reports and as I can see it is now trying to download the files from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/repodata/ There seem to be some xml files describing the modules and as I can see I have already written a partial parser for them http://search.cpan.org/dist/Parse-Fedora-Packages/ The problem is that they are only up to Fedora 6 and if I am right the latest is 8. So where is the data for the newer version? The repo at http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/os/repodata/ is probably what you are looking for, for Fedora 8. For updates (released since Fedora 8 GA), the repo at http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386/repodata/ can be used. I hope I'm answering the question you are asking, ;-) Yes, that seems to be the one I was looking for. Now a few more questions: Would this one be the same for the development (soon to be 9) version? http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os/repodata/ Are there similar repository for RedHat releases? Gabor -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On 11 Mar 2008 14:18:07 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DC == Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: DC I've always had a sneaking suspicion that what I've got are good DC enough for me, but not for Fedora's repositories. Well, modern cpanspec generates pretty good specs. Generally what you need to do is verify the license (which unfortunately seems to be the most time-consuming bit these days), change the License: tag appropriately, As Dave mentioned earlier the CPANTS project is trying to measure various kwalitees of the modules. Among other things it checks if both the META.yaml and the source code has licenses. I am sure the current way of checking it has some flaws but I am also sure the CPANTS project will reduce your work by eliminating some of the issues you encounter. So if you do find a module with problematic licenses it would be great if you could check if CPANTS http://cpants.perl.org/ has also caught that issue. If yes, you can point that out to the author. If not, please ping Thomas Klausner, the CPANTS developer or one of his helpers e.g. me so we can improve the metric used. Gabor -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 20:55 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: So if you do find a module with problematic licenses it would be great if you could check if CPANTS http://cpants.perl.org/ has also caught that issue. To be brutally honest, Artistic 1.0 is a problematic license. It's been poorly interpreted in US court (1), and is not a free license (says the FSF, who gets to decide what is free). We're going through the process of trying to contact upstream copyright holders for code that is marked as Artistic 1.0 only (same license as perl is fine, since we can just choose GPL+), in the attempt to get them to relicense or dual license. Most of the offenders here are perl modules. It is my plan to pull all of the Artistic 1.0 code out of rawhide in Fedora 10. ~spot 1: http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-open-source-legal-decision-jacobsen.html -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
GS == Gabor Szabo [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: GS So if you do find a module with problematic licenses it would be GS great if you could check if CPANTS http://cpants.perl.org/ has GS also caught that issue. This is good news; Perl modules have often been a source of licensing trouble due to missing or contradictory licenses. Please also note that in Fedora, problematic license applies to the plain Artistic license, so if a package licensed under the original Artistic license (not the clarified or 2.0 versions) and does not also have some other license (such as in the Same as Perl GPL+ or Artistic) then it is unfortunately not acceptable for Fedora. For example, Net-SinFP has 104.17% Kwalitee on the CPANTS site but is not acceptable for Fedora because it carries only the Artistic license. - J -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On 12 Mar 2008 14:08:36 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: GS == Gabor Szabo [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: GS So if you do find a module with problematic licenses it would be GS great if you could check if CPANTS http://cpants.perl.org/ has GS also caught that issue. This is good news; Perl modules have often been a source of licensing trouble due to missing or contradictory licenses. Please also note that in Fedora, problematic license applies to the plain Artistic license, so if a package licensed under the original Artistic license (not the clarified or 2.0 versions) and does not also have some other license (such as in the Same as Perl GPL+ or Artistic) then it is unfortunately not acceptable for Fedora. For example, Net-SinFP has 104.17% Kwalitee on the CPANTS site but is not acceptable for Fedora because it carries only the Artistic license. Thanks. Then I'll propose to Thomas and if accepted implement a metric called packagable_by_fedora that will check several things: The first thing it will include is a check on the license. I am not sure though if it should check license is not Artistic 1.0 alone It might be better to build a list of licenses acceptable by Fedora and check if the module has one of those licenses. In this case the starting list would be: 1) Perl (aka Artistic 1 + GPL) 2) Artistic 2 What others would you include in that list? Gabor -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 09:26:41PM +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: What others would you include in that list? The full list is on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#head-19fc3ef10add085a28cb06784dc34ef8b05a9bd6 -- Pat -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
GS == Gabor Szabo [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: GS What others would you include in that list? The current set of approved licenses should be at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing (which isn't responding for me at the moment, so I can't cut'n'paste for you). - J -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
Ralf Corsepius wrote: On Sat, 2008-03-08 at 07:34 +, Dave Cross wrote: I also have this problem. Not many days go by without me needing a CPAN module that isn't pre-packaged into an RPM. In those cases I often find that cpanspec works to whip up a quick RPM that that I can use. I don't know how many of those automatically generated RPMs would reach the standards required for inclusion in Fedora, but I'm slowly (manually!) making them available at http://rpm.mag-sol.com/ And why don't you contribute them back to fedora instead shipping them on your own for your private pleasures? Well, I'm not sure that putting them on a public web site constitutes shipping them for my private pleasures :) I've always had a sneaking suspicion that what I've got are good enough for me, but not for Fedora's repositories. I suspect that to do that I'd need to put more time into cleaning up the specs than I can spare. But, yes, I agree that it's something I should do. Once I've sorted out what I've got and made sure that a) they're all up to date and b) nothing duplicates stuff already available from Fedora, then I'll look at submitting them to the Fedora approval process. Cheers, Dave... -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
DC == Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: DC I've always had a sneaking suspicion that what I've got are good DC enough for me, but not for Fedora's repositories. Well, modern cpanspec generates pretty good specs. Generally what you need to do is verify the license (which unfortunately seems to be the most time-consuming bit these days), change the License: tag appropriately, and add build dependencies (BuildRequires:) sufficient to get the module to build in mock and be able to run as much of its test suite properly. A quick glance over the Summary: and %description helps as well. If the license is unambiguous, this takes a couple of minutes plus whatever time it takes mock to run. Submitting the review takes a couple of minutes more. Generally Perl packages are reviewed quickly because the reviewer usually just needs to verify that you've done the stuff in the previous paragraph. - J -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On 11 Mar 2008 14:18:07 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DC == Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: DC I've always had a sneaking suspicion that what I've got are good DC enough for me, but not for Fedora's repositories. Well, modern cpanspec generates pretty good specs. Generally what you need to do is verify the license (which unfortunately seems to be the most time-consuming bit these days), change the License: tag appropriately, and add build dependencies (BuildRequires:) sufficient to get the module to build in mock and be able to run as much of its test suite properly. A quick glance over the Summary: and %description helps as well. If the license is unambiguous, this takes a couple of minutes plus whatever time it takes mock to run. Submitting the review takes a couple of minutes more. Generally Perl packages are reviewed quickly because the reviewer usually just needs to verify that you've done the stuff in the previous paragraph. The perl guidelines at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/Perl often help point out the perl-specific bits, as well. IMHO, of course :) -Chris -- Chris Weyl Ex astris, scientia -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Sat, Mar 08, 2008 at 07:34:27AM +, Dave Cross wrote: In those cases I often find that cpanspec works to whip up a quick RPM that that I can use. I don't know how many of those automatically generated RPMs would reach the standards required for inclusion in Fedora, but I'm slowly (manually!) making them available at http://rpm.mag-sol.com/ I just took a quick look at that, and I noticed that a *bunch* of those modules are already available in Fedora... BTW, since YAPC::NA isn't all that far from me, I just submitted a proposal for a talk on Fedora perl packaging... http://blog.stevecoinc.com/2008/03/yapcna-2008-abstract.html Steve -- Steven Pritchard - KS Pritchard Enterprises, Inc. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kspei.com/ Phone: (618)624-4440 Mobile: (618)567-7320 -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
Steven Pritchard wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2008 at 07:34:27AM +, Dave Cross wrote: http://rpm.mag-sol.com/ I just took a quick look at that, and I noticed that a *bunch* of those modules are already available in Fedora... Yep. I noticed that over the weekend as well. They were created when they weren't available. It all needs a good clean-out. Remove the ones that are now available from Fedora and ensure I have up to date builds of the ones that aren't. I've started sketching out plans to automate this. The long easter weekend looks like a good time to start to implement them. BTW, since YAPC::NA isn't all that far from me, I just submitted a proposal for a talk on Fedora perl packaging... http://blog.stevecoinc.com/2008/03/yapcna-2008-abstract.html That all sounds very interesting. I won't be there unfortunately as there's an ocean between me and YAPC::NA :) - but I look forward to seeing your slides. Dave... -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steven Pritchard wrote: On Sat, Mar 08, 2008 at 07:34:27AM +, Dave Cross wrote: http://rpm.mag-sol.com/ I just took a quick look at that, and I noticed that a *bunch* of those modules are already available in Fedora... Yep. I noticed that over the weekend as well. They were created when they weren't available. It all needs a good clean-out. Remove the ones that are now available from Fedora and ensure I have up to date builds of the ones that aren't. I've started sketching out plans to automate this. The long easter weekend looks like a good time to start to implement them. Dave, do you know about this: http://debian.pkgs.cpan.org/ That and CPANPLUS can be a good starting point. Gabor -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 09:37 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: Hi, I see on http://perl-qa.hexten.net/wiki/index.php/OsloQAWorkshop2008 that probably non of you is going to participate. That's a pity. Anyway I am trying to setup some documentation/system that might help all the distros to include more CPAN packages more easily. For this I setup a page collecting information about the availability of CPAN packages in the various distros http://www.szabgab.com/distributions/ As you can see Fedora is way underrepresented there. How did you collect these numbers? Fedora FC2: 44? Apart from that this particular distro is dead for many years, the figure is _way off_ from current status. My current estimate of CPAN dists in current Fedora is: # grep perl- owners.fedora.list | wc -l 841 That's in the same range as Ubuntu, Debian and other major Linux distros. I guess you counted the number of CPAN dists in FC2's Fedora Core, not the number of perl-dists in Fedora Core 2 + Fedora Extra 2. Also, I don't know what you count as module. Perl in Fedora without any doubt has evolved sufficiently long to justify boldly claiming most essential vital modules/dists to be in Fedora and only rarely needed modules (minus those with legal issues) to be missing. I really have no idea how a distro can be claimed to be supporting 8000+ perl-dists, nor how useful such a distro would be. My wild guess is they are counting differently or contain a lot of duplicated CPAN modules. What if you could have a wishlist that you could present to CPAN module authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those who package CPAN modules for Fedora? In decreasing priority: - Improve your versioning scheme - perl's versioning doesn't harmonize well with rpm's versioning. - Think about the licenses you apply. Write Free software. - Write better code. There is a lot of junk in CPAN. ... Ralf -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 09:37 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: Hi, I see on http://perl-qa.hexten.net/wiki/index.php/OsloQAWorkshop2008 that probably non of you is going to participate. That's a pity. Anyway I am trying to setup some documentation/system that might help all the distros to include more CPAN packages more easily. For this I setup a page collecting information about the availability of CPAN packages in the various distros http://www.szabgab.com/distributions/ As you can see Fedora is way underrepresented there. How did you collect these numbers? I was using Module::Packaged of Leon (blame him :-) I patched it where I could but that was almost a year ago. I wish to start it again. See my most recent source if you have time to point me where to fetch the data from. http://svn1.hostlocal.com/szabgab/trunk/Module-Packaged-0.86/ Fedora FC2: 44? Apart from that this particular distro is dead for many years, the figure is _way off_ from current status. My current estimate of CPAN dists in current Fedora is: # grep perl- owners.fedora.list | wc -l 841 That's in the same range as Ubuntu, Debian and other major Linux distros. I guess you counted the number of CPAN dists in FC2's Fedora Core, not the number of perl-dists in Fedora Core 2 + Fedora Extra 2. probably that's what the module is doing. I think both should be counted and maybe we should also mark which module is where. Also, I don't know what you count as module. Perl in Fedora without any doubt has evolved sufficiently long to justify boldly claiming most essential vital modules/dists to be in Fedora and only rarely needed modules (minus those with legal issues) to be missing. I wish to count CPAN distros (that is tar.gz files from CPAN). I really have no idea how a distro can be claimed to be supporting 8000+ perl-dists, nor how useful such a distro would be. My wild guess is they are counting differently or contain a lot of duplicated CPAN modules. There are some 13.000 on CPAN so 8000+ is still less than 2/3. What if you could have a wishlist that you could present to CPAN module authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those who package CPAN modules for Fedora? In decreasing priority: - Improve your versioning scheme - perl's versioning doesn't harmonize well with rpm's versioning. Can you elaborate - give a few short examples or at least point me where is it described? - Think about the licenses you apply. Write Free software. Do you have examples you encountered where it is not so on CPAN? - Write better code. There is a lot of junk in CPAN. Wow, do you have a suggestion how to automatically measure this? Gabor -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 10:38 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 09:37 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: Hi, I see on http://perl-qa.hexten.net/wiki/index.php/OsloQAWorkshop2008 that probably non of you is going to participate. That's a pity. Anyway I am trying to setup some documentation/system that might help all the distros to include more CPAN packages more easily. For this I setup a page collecting information about the availability of CPAN packages in the various distros http://www.szabgab.com/distributions/ As you can see Fedora is way underrepresented there. How did you collect these numbers? I wish to count CPAN distros (that is tar.gz files from CPAN). OK, then the figure I gave should be pretty close. I counted packages using a perl- prefix in Fedora's package database. As most CPAN dists in Fedora are packaged into separate rpms prefixed with perl- this should give a pretty good estimate. I really have no idea how a distro can be claimed to be supporting 8000+ perl-dists, nor how useful such a distro would be. My wild guess is they are counting differently or contain a lot of duplicated CPAN modules. There are some 13.000 on CPAN so 8000+ is still less than 2/3. To put it bluntly: Perl-dists in Fedora are more or less community-only maintained, i.e. inclusion of perl-dists in Fedora is more or less community demand-driven = There is little demand for these remaining 12000 packages, probably because hardly anybody needs them. What if you could have a wishlist that you could present to CPAN module authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those who package CPAN modules for Fedora? In decreasing priority: - Improve your versioning scheme - perl's versioning doesn't harmonize well with rpm's versioning. Can you elaborate - give a few short examples or at least point me where is it described? Example: A perl-dist using a version number of 0.04. What does this mean? For rpm, 0.04 equals 0.4. For CPAN this means something completely different. This raises version comparison problems when perl-dists jump in their versions, e.g. 0.04 - 0.40. For rpm, both versions are equal = 0.4 (null point four), i.e. CPAN/Perl versions need special treatment when mapping them to rpm versions. - Think about the licenses you apply. Write Free software. Do you have examples you encountered where it is not so on CPAN? I don't have a concrete example at hand, but there have been plenty of such cases. Most CPAN dists apparently are maintained by individuals, who actually don't care much about licensing. There are CPAN maintainers who switch from GPL to MIT though their dists contain loads of user-contributed code. There are CPAN packages which don't have any license information inside. There are CPAN packages harvesting code from other packages without thinking about licenses at all ... You might not be aware about it, but there are people who considers the original Artistic license to be non-free (One of these groups is the FSF: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html) - Write better code. There is a lot of junk in CPAN. Wow, do you have a suggestion how to automatically measure this? No. I consider this simply to be a matter of fact due to the nature of CPAN. IMHO, the fact Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu etc. are getting away by not shipping 12000+ modules speaks for itself: Most of CPAN is more or less dead code, for various reasons. One reason is modules not making it into mainstream distros due to lack of quality. Licensing issues, lack of generality and lack of portability are other reasons. Ralf -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
* Ralf Corsepius [07/03/2008 10:53] : To put it bluntly: Perl-dists in Fedora are more or less community-only maintained, i.e. inclusion of perl-dists in Fedora is more or less community demand-driven = There is little demand for these remaining 12000 packages, probably because hardly anybody needs them. I've got a handful of Perl modules that I've rolled into rpms and I seriously doubt I'm the only one. How does one ask for a perl module to be packaged ? - Think about the licenses you apply. Write Free software. Do you have examples you encountered where it is not so on CPAN? I don't have a concrete example at hand, but there have been plenty of such cases. The RPM2 module took a long time to package because its license was unclear (see bug #184530 for details). perl-Log-Dispatch-FileRotate had a similar issue (bug #171640). search.cpan.org always calls a module's licence as Unknown no matter how clearly the licence is in the source code itself. You might not be aware about it, but there are people who considers the original Artistic license to be non-free (One of these groups is the FSF: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html) To be fair, this page calls Artistic too vague to be qualified as free (I presume this means it's equally too vague to be qualified as non-free). Both the clarified AL and AL 2.0 are qualified as free and GPL-compatible. Emmanuel -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 11:16:14AM +0100, Emmanuel Seyman wrote: * Ralf Corsepius [07/03/2008 10:53] : To put it bluntly: Perl-dists in Fedora are more or less community-only maintained, i.e. inclusion of perl-dists in Fedora is more or less community demand-driven = There is little demand for these remaining 12000 packages, probably because hardly anybody needs them. I've got a handful of Perl modules that I've rolled into rpms and I seriously doubt I'm the only one. How does one ask for a perl module to be packaged ? If you want to package it yourself and become a fedora contributor, you should look at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join The main page is at: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers There is also a wishlist for packages, but I doubt it makes much sense for perl modules. -- Pat -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 10:38 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 09:37 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: Hi, I see on http://perl-qa.hexten.net/wiki/index.php/OsloQAWorkshop2008 that probably non of you is going to participate. That's a pity. Anyway I am trying to setup some documentation/system that might help all the distros to include more CPAN packages more easily. For this I setup a page collecting information about the availability of CPAN packages in the various distros http://www.szabgab.com/distributions/ As you can see Fedora is way underrepresented there. How did you collect these numbers? I wish to count CPAN distros (that is tar.gz files from CPAN). OK, then the figure I gave should be pretty close. I counted packages using a perl- prefix in Fedora's package database. As most CPAN dists in Fedora are packaged into separate rpms prefixed with perl- this should give a pretty good estimate. Where can I fetch this list from? Is there a canonical URL where I'll be able to find this list for the various versions of Fedora? Same question regarding the development versions of Fedora and if you know about the RedHat distros as well that would be great. I really have no idea how a distro can be claimed to be supporting 8000+ perl-dists, nor how useful such a distro would be. My wild guess is they are counting differently or contain a lot of duplicated CPAN modules. There are some 13.000 on CPAN so 8000+ is still less than 2/3. To put it bluntly: Perl-dists in Fedora are more or less community-only maintained, i.e. inclusion of perl-dists in Fedora is more or less community demand-driven = There is little demand for these remaining 12000 packages, probably because hardly anybody needs them. In my experience the community is a very small subset of the users. In Perl - where I am a bit more familiar - I think there are only a few thousand people involved in the community while there are ~ 1.000.000 people writing Perl code (in various levels) and many more using it hidden in some application. In addition many corporate users take the distros as given. They don't even think they can ask the distro people to include something in the distro. That means in many cases the users won't ask and you'll think they don't need the modules. IMHO there is very little communication between the distro communities and the Perl community. Some Debian people have started a dialog on the last YAPC in Vienna and I wish we can increase that even further. The QA Workshop in Oslo would be a great opportunity for that but if none of you can come then the next YAPC::EU in Coppenhagen can be also good for more personal contact. What if you could have a wishlist that you could present to CPAN module authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those who package CPAN modules for Fedora? In decreasing priority: - Improve your versioning scheme - perl's versioning doesn't harmonize well with rpm's versioning. Can you elaborate - give a few short examples or at least point me where is it described? Example: A perl-dist using a version number of 0.04. What does this mean? For rpm, 0.04 equals 0.4. For CPAN this means something completely different. This raises version comparison problems when perl-dists jump in their versions, e.g. 0.04 - 0.40. For rpm, both versions are equal = 0.4 (null point four), i.e. CPAN/Perl versions need special treatment when mapping them to rpm versions. The Debian people are saying they don't care too much about what are the version numbers as long as any single module sticks to its versioning model. Besides it is impossible to ask the CPAN community to stick to any one system. What we can do is come up (if you have not done it yet) with a mapping solution that will easily map most of the CPAN version themes to the way Fedora does it. We can include this in Kwalitee metrics of CPANTS. Then when you encounter a module that does not use any of those version themes you can politely point the author to that document. So what is the definition of a version number in Fedora? - Think about the licenses you apply. Write Free software. Do you have examples you encountered where it is not so on CPAN? I don't have a concrete example at hand, but there have been plenty of such cases. Most CPAN dists apparently are maintained by individuals, who actually don't care much about licensing. You are right on the fact that most distros are maintained by individuals but I don't seem to be able to find prof for the second part. There are CPAN maintainers who switch from GPL to MIT though their dists contain loads of
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
Emmanuel Seyman wrote: search.cpan.org always calls a module's licence as Unknown no matter how clearly the licence is in the source code itself. That's no longer true. See, for example: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Symbol-Approx-Sub/ Which includes Perl (Artistic and GPL). I'm pretty sure that's driven by the licence key in META.yml. And having your distribution containing both machine-readable and human-readable licence information are two of the CPANTS project's kwalitee measures - see, for example, http://cpants.perl.org/dist/kwalitee/Symbol-Approx-Sub So, this is an issue that the Perl community is aware of and is working on. Cheers, Dave... -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 17:19 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 10:38 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 09:37 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: Hi, I see on http://perl-qa.hexten.net/wiki/index.php/OsloQAWorkshop2008 that probably non of you is going to participate. That's a pity. Anyway I am trying to setup some documentation/system that might help all the distros to include more CPAN packages more easily. For this I setup a page collecting information about the availability of CPAN packages in the various distros http://www.szabgab.com/distributions/ As you can see Fedora is way underrepresented there. How did you collect these numbers? I wish to count CPAN distros (that is tar.gz files from CPAN). OK, then the figure I gave should be pretty close. I counted packages using a perl- prefix in Fedora's package database. As most CPAN dists in Fedora are packaged into separate rpms prefixed with perl- this should give a pretty good estimate. Where can I fetch this list from? I am using this script: --- snip --- #!/bin/sh owners=$(HOME)/src/fedora/local lftp \ -c get https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugzilla?tg_format=plain; \ -o $owners/owners.list.raw cat $owners/owners.list.raw | grep '^Fedora|' $owners/owners.fedora.list --- snip --- And grep'ed the generated owners.fedora.list: grep perl- owners.fedora.list I really have no idea how a distro can be claimed to be supporting 8000+ perl-dists, nor how useful such a distro would be. My wild guess is they are counting differently or contain a lot of duplicated CPAN modules. There are some 13.000 on CPAN so 8000+ is still less than 2/3. To put it bluntly: Perl-dists in Fedora are more or less community-only maintained, i.e. inclusion of perl-dists in Fedora is more or less community demand-driven = There is little demand for these remaining 12000 packages, probably because hardly anybody needs them. In my experience the community is a very small subset of the users. Yep, ... ;) In Perl - where I am a bit more familiar - I think there are only a few thousand people involved in the community while there are ~ 1.000.000 people writing Perl code (in various levels) and many more using it hidden in some application. Yes, ... In addition many corporate users take the distros as given. They don't even think they can ask the distro people to include something in the distro. That means in many cases the users won't ask and you'll think they don't need the modules. That's the difference between Fedora and commercial distros. Fedora is a taylor-the-distro-to-your-demands-by-contributing and mutually-share-the-benefits-with-others distro. ... that's essentially the basis of all open source development, which makes the fundamental difference to commercial OSes ;) IMHO there is very little communication between the distro communities and the Perl community. Some Debian people have started a dialog on the last YAPC in Vienna and I wish we can increase that even further. The QA Workshop in Oslo would be a great opportunity for that but if none of you can come then the next YAPC::EU in Coppenhagen can be also good for more personal contact. sigh/ That's fundamental problem community-driven/maintained distros like Fedora and Debian: Volunteers don't have travel budgets ;) What if you could have a wishlist that you could present to CPAN module authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those who package CPAN modules for Fedora? In decreasing priority: - Improve your versioning scheme - perl's versioning doesn't harmonize well with rpm's versioning. Can you elaborate - give a few short examples or at least point me where is it described? Example: A perl-dist using a version number of 0.04. What does this mean? For rpm, 0.04 equals 0.4. For CPAN this means something completely different. This raises version comparison problems when perl-dists jump in their versions, e.g. 0.04 - 0.40. For rpm, both versions are equal = 0.4 (null point four), i.e. CPAN/Perl versions need special treatment when mapping them to rpm versions. The Debian people are saying they don't care too much about what are the version numbers as long as any single module sticks to its versioning model. Well, ... It definitely doesn't apply to rpm-based distros such as Fedora. Choosing versioning models has always been problematic and controversial in general, as well as has synchronizing two different versioning models been problematic. What we can do is come up (if you have not done it yet) with a
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
Ralf Corsepius wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 17:19 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: IMHO there is very little communication between the distro communities and the Perl community. Some Debian people have started a dialog on the last YAPC in Vienna and I wish we can increase that even further. The QA Workshop in Oslo would be a great opportunity for that but if none of you can come then the next YAPC::EU in Coppenhagen can be also good for more personal contact. sigh/ That's fundamental problem community-driven/maintained distros like Fedora and Debian: Volunteers don't have travel budgets ;) If there are meetings like this where it is beneficial to Perl if people meet up to face to face, then it's possible that The Perl Foundation[1] would be interested in sponsoring at least part of the travel and accommodation costs. If you're interested, then it's certainly worth speaking to them about it. Dave... [1] http://foundation.perl.org/ -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 8:26 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 17:19 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 10:38 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Ralf Corsepius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 09:37 +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: Where can I fetch this list from? I am using this script: ... thanks I'll try to integrate it into that report. In addition many corporate users take the distros as given. They don't even think they can ask the distro people to include something in the distro. That means in many cases the users won't ask and you'll think they don't need the modules. That's the difference between Fedora and commercial distros. Fedora is a taylor-the-distro-to-your-demands-by-contributing and mutually-share-the-benefits-with-others distro. ... that's essentially the basis of all open source development, which makes the fundamental difference to commercial OSes ;) Most users I encountered don't really differentiate between the distros they say we use linux version N and that does not mean the kernel. The same people won't know they can ask or get involved in adding more packages. They just see the whole thing as given. IMHO there is very little communication between the distro communities and the Perl community. Some Debian people have started a dialog on the last YAPC in Vienna and I wish we can increase that even further. The QA Workshop in Oslo would be a great opportunity for that but if none of you can come then the next YAPC::EU in Coppenhagen can be also good for more personal contact. sigh/ That's fundamental problem community-driven/maintained distros like Fedora and Debian: Volunteers don't have travel budgets ;) Actuall the QA Workshop might be able to finance your trip so if you have the time and the willingness to join the workshop, please add yourself to the wiki http://perl-qa.hexten.net/wiki/index.php/OsloQAWorkshop2008 ASAP and we'll see if the organizers can cover your costs as well. See below one of my objectives on the QA Workshop. The Debian people are saying they don't care too much about what are the version numbers as long as any single module sticks to its versioning model. Well, ... It definitely doesn't apply to rpm-based distros such as Fedora. Choosing versioning models has always been problematic and controversial in general, as well as has synchronizing two different versioning models been problematic. What we can do is come up (if you have not done it yet) with a mapping solution that will easily map most of the CPAN version themes to the way Fedora does it. We can include this in Kwalitee metrics of CPANTS. Then when you encounter a module that does not use any of those version themes you can politely point the author to that document. There have been dozens of such cases in Fedora-rpms/CPAN-dists in rpms history :( So what is the definition of a version number in Fedora? Fedora is rpm based. I.e. it internally applies rpm's versioning scheme. Unfortunately, elaborating how rpm's versioning works would be beyond the scope of this mail :( Is that so complex? I mean can't you just write it down as a regex? Isn't that \d\d\.\d - Think about the licenses you apply. Write Free software. Do you have examples you encountered where it is not so on CPAN? I don't have a concrete example at hand, but there have been plenty of such cases. Most CPAN dists apparently are maintained by individuals, who actually don't care much about licensing. You are right on the fact that most distros are maintained by individuals but I don't seem to be able to find prof for the second part. Do I have to dig out the cases we've encountered? No, but I'd appreciate if you also copied me next time you encounter one. You might not be aware about it, but there are people who considers the original Artistic license to be non-free (One of these groups is the FSF: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html) Do you say that Fedora includes only code which comes with an FSF approved license? No. We once had the rule to include only package which carry an OSI approved license, but ... rules have been weakened ... I don't want to reheat this controversy at this point. Fact is: Opinions on what to consider Open/Free SW diverge. Options differ but Artistic 1.0 is OSI approved. But that's not the point of my initiative anyway. It would be more constructive to give reasonable wishes what would you like to see in the CPAN distros - license vise - in order to make it easier for you to build rpms. OK, my advice to CPAN module authors: * Clearly and properly copyright your works. *
Re: Packaging CPAN modules for Fedora, the Oslo QA Hackathon, CPAN::Porters
Gabor Szabo wrote: Lately I have also arrived to the conclusion that if you are not interested in bleeding edge Perl development then you should use only the modules supplied by your OS or Perl vendor. For that having only 1000 modules is way too low. A couple of years ago I reached the same conclusion. All of my Fedora systems now only have CPAN modules that are installed as RPMs. I am using a wide range of Linux distros as I am a consultant and every client uses somethings else. I encounter missing modules on daily bases so I have no choice but to use CPAN.pm. I also have this problem. Not many days go by without me needing a CPAN module that isn't pre-packaged into an RPM. In those cases I often find that cpanspec works to whip up a quick RPM that that I can use. I don't know how many of those automatically generated RPMs would reach the standards required for inclusion in Fedora, but I'm slowly (manually!) making them available at http://rpm.mag-sol.com/ Cheers, Dave... -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
