dh_perl and ABI dependencies

[Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org>]

Can someone please clarify this to me?  From dh_perl:

    if ($deps & XS_MODULE or $dh{V_FLAG_SET}) {
            ($version) = `dpkg -s $perl` =~ /^Version:\s*(\S+)/m
                    unless $version;
            $version = ">= $version";
    }

...

    addsubstvar($package, "perl:Depends", "perlapi-$Config{version}")
            if $deps & XS_MODULE;

Now, both of these seem to be workarounds for the fact that the shlibs
mechanism doesn't work because most perl modules aren't linked with
-lperl.  But are they really _both_ needed?  Why not just have one or
the other?

As a secondary point: I think that, assuming dh_perl needs to emulate
dh_shlibdeps, it ought to do it _correctly_, by reading
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libperl5.8.shlibs rather than just generating a
conservative (perl >= 5.8.8-current-debian-release).  This sounds like
an academic point, but it's not: there is a real problem right now with
etch migration of a lot of packages, which would have been prevented by
_proper_ shlibs emulation.

Can anyone shed light on these two (related) issues?

Thanks,
Peter

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