Re: New Perl Packages Released

[Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org>]

[followups set to debian-perl]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 08:45:18PM -0800, Ben Gertzfield wrote:
>>>>>> "Brendan" == Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org> writes:
[...what does]
>Binary modules must specify a dependency on either perl or perl-base
>with a minimum version of the perl package used to build the module,
>and must additionally depend on the expansion of
>perlapi-$Config{version}.
>
>mean?  I don't understand "must aditionally depend on the expansion of
>perlapi-$Config{version}; this looks more like Perl syntax than
>the substvars syntax.  Is this meant to go into the control file
>verbatim?

It is perl syntax, policy doesn't mandate how you generate the substvars
although notes that dh_perl will do it for you.

I may be making the unwaranted assumption that people know what the
Config module is, but I didn't want to put a specific version into
policy.  For the current packages, the value is "perlapi-5.6.0".

In general, the dependencies on the current version should be one of:

    perl
    perl (>= 5.6.0-18)

for perl-only modules and programs.  The versioned dependency is
required if either "use version" or "require version" is used explicitly
in the module/program, or it uses newer features (like say "our").  You
must pass the -V option to dh_perl to cause the versioned dependency to
be created (note that -V is currently undocumented, I'll send a patch to
Joey today).

For binary (XS) modules, the dependency is:

    perl (>= 5.6.0-18), perlapi-5.6.0

Note that dh_perl automatically determines whether the perl-only or the
binary dependencies are required.

In certain specific cases, the dependency should be on perl-base, rather
than perl (things like debconf for example).  In which case, the -d
option to dh_perl should be used.

Regards,
-- 
Brendan O'Dea                                        bod@compusol.com.au
Compusol Pty. Limited                  (NSW, Australia)  +61 2 9810 3633