Re: perl and perl-modules; reflexive dependencies vs. archive bloat

[Andreas Metzler <ametzler@downhill.at.eu.org>]

James Vega <jamessan@debian.org> wrote:
[...]
> I don't see how perl-modules is that much different than the various
> arch-independent data packages which provide little to no functionality
> on their own but are required by another arch-dependent package.  Many
> of those either Recommend the relevant package or declare no
> relationship at all.

Hello,

these data packages usually are leaf packages with just a single
dependency. foo depends on foo-data, and everything requiring
foo-functionality depends on directly on foo. 

ametzler@argenau:~$ grep-available -FDepends -sPackage perl-modules | wc
     93     186    2275

I think depending on perl-modules is currently best practice,
especially 'perl-modules >= x | libfoo-perl' for dependencies on
functionality that was integrated into perl-modules at some point of
time.

I am not totally sure this is a significant difference though, many of
the packages with a dependency on perl-modules will probably have at
least a indirect dependency (not only over perl-modules) on perl, too.

cu andreas

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