Re: Creating Debian dependencies while using CPAN?

[Christian Hammers <ch@westend.com>]

Hello

On Sat, 29.07.00 21:02 +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Hmm. Can someone please summarize the problem, the proposed solutions
> and what might need to be changed in dpkg? Please take into accont that
> I don't program in perl at all and have never used CPAN.
Situation:
CPAN is the main archive for thousands of perl modules. Each of this modules 
is normally quite small and installing it needs not more than 
	perl Makefile.PL; make; [make test;] make install
But as we get more and more packages that depends on perl modules, more 
and more of these modules are debianized.
Problem:
1. We don't like to have to package every perl module and 2. mixing perl 
modules from CPAN with those from Debian is sometimes a bit hairy as the 
Debian modules still claim unresolved dependencies (of course) and when 
deinstalling a CPAN modul in favour of a Debian one, one often missed a file.
Solutions:
1. apt-get/dpkg knows how to install CPAN packages and will maybe add 
automatically some entry in the dpkg status file.
   pro: easy :-); 
   contra: it looses our strong dependency system and it's unclear what
           to do with those cpan modules which are needed for main.
2. we continue the status-quo and debianize CPAN - but we work on a more
   automatized solution that enables us to use a buildd for 90% of the
   solutions and, as they are real debian packages we always can override.
   pro: strong dependency system can maintained
   contra: much work and we need to think about where those packages live.

To 2. the small solution would be just to improve the current perl-module
templates to make it more easier for the existing packages and the big
plan, Fabian proposes, sometimes to make a cpan.debian.org, which contains
nearly all Perl modules, build by a daemon, to get debian users access to
all modules with apt-get comfort.

 

> Wichert.
bye,

 -christian-

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