On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, Brendan O'Dea wrote: > On Sun, Aug 21, 2005 at 04:18:53PM +0200, Miernik wrote: > >Does the defoma package has to depend on perl package, wouldn't it be > >enough for it to depend on perl-base? > > > >And I ask the same question about dictionaries-common - what > >requires it to depend on "perl" instead of much smaller "perl-base" > >and is that intentional? > > See section 2.2 of Perl Policy: > > Note that the `perl-base' package is intended only to provide for > exceptional circumstances and the contents may change. In general > only packages which form part of the base system should declare a > dependency on `perl-base' rather than `perl'." > > Note *exceptional circumstances* in this text: it is not intended > for general use. Currently, yes... but as many of us are doing deployments of Debian on thin devices, it would be nice to avoid a dependency on perl and perl-modules when it isn't actually required.[1] Some modules don't require anything else but /usr/bin/perl, Carp, XSLoader, and Exporter... I can't forsee a version of perl-base that ever failed to include these modules (and actually included anything else.) [Of course, in the end, I and others can keep doing what we're doing and packaging separate versions of these packages for the thin devices that we deploy... it's just suboptimal.] Don Armstrong 1: Especially in light of the current upstream practice of sticking almost every module known to mankind in the base distribution. -- This can't be happening to me. I've got tenure. -- James Hynes _Publish and Perish_ http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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