Re: Versioned provides ... a necessity !
On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Chip Salzenberg wrote:
> According to Jules Bean:
> > For their own reaons, which are opaque to me [but are almost certainly
> > documented somewhere - try perl5-porters] upstream has decided to change
> > the path-names. They've done this because they think most modules won't
> > continute to work, I imagine. So we shouldn't defy their policy.
>
> No; only the BINARY interface for shared libs has changed incompatibly.
>
> The standard library pathnames have changed because provided modules'
> versions have changed, and sometimes the new modules won't work with
> old perl binaries. If we overwrite an old Data::Dumper with the new
> one, and if the new one used 5.005-specific features, then programs
> using Perl 5.004 and Data::Dumper would fail. That's bad.
>
> But any Perl-only module that's compatible with e.g. 5.004 should work
> without change under 5.005.
In which case, there's no reason why we (debian, that is) shouldn't have a
shared lib directory between 5.004 and 5.005 (and 5.006...), is there?
So we could move all our (non-binary) modules to a directory whose name
isn't going to change, and use it for subsequent versions. Non-binary
modules which *do* in fact require a particular version (perhaps because
they use a new feature) could then be installed in the version specific
directory.
Except then they won't be available in the next version. Damn. And
simply depend:ing on the right version would be enough if we only allow
one version of perl installed simultaneously - but not if we broaden it to
allow many.
Argh.
Anyone see how to clear this up neatly?
Jules
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| Jelibean aka | jules@jellybean.co.uk | 6 Evelyn Rd |
| Jules aka | jules@debian.org | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
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| War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. |
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