dh-make-perl and building prerequisites

[Nick Woolley <nickwoolley@yahoo.co.uk>]

Hello,

Another newcomer here.

I've been using dh-make-perl (v0.50) and have an experimental wrapper script [1]
which generates a Perl module install sequence using CPANPLUS.  Given a Perl
module name the script will find the list of uninstalled prerequisites, and go
and build them into Debian packages using dh-make-perl. (So far, it does not
find non-Perl dependencies, nor does it know what packages are available via apt.)

I'm still in the process of discovering what prior art exists - I know it's
quite possible someone else has a better solution than mine.  However, a brief
look at the latest source for dh-make-perl in SVN trunk suggests that it doesn't
have the capability I've been working on - correct?

On the other hand, a taking look through the bugs list for dh-make-perl, I
notice #342751, "[PATCH] make required debs from module dependency":

 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=342751

This looks like it did exactly what I have in mind, but time has passed and it
would seem to require a fair amount of adapting to work with dh-make-perl as it
is now.  (It also seems to build a package before its prerequisites, so even
after my initial attempt to fix it, it failed on the first build.)

The discussion thread there suggests that there were finally no objections to
incorporate it, just no-one found the time. Is that also correct?

Another thing I notice, bug #481466 suggests that use of CPANPLUS may be an
issue (but so far as I can see, not why).


So I'd like to ask:

 - Is my script worth pursuing, so far as debian-perl is concerned?
 - Or is there another preferred approach to building dependencies?
 - If so, is anybody working on this?
 - Is use of CPANPLUS a barrier to incorporation into dh-make-perl?


Thanks,

Nick
(wu-lee-guest on Alioth)


1. My work-in-progress is on github:

 http://github.com/wu-lee/CPAN-InstallSequence

To try it:

 $ git clone git://github.com/wu-lee/CPAN-InstallSequence.git
 $ cd CPAN-InstallSequence

 # This just checks you have all the dependencies installed:
 $ perl Build.PL

 # Build a module+prereqs from CPAN like this:
 $ perl -Ilib script/dh-make-perl-deps Chart::Clicker

Results in ~/dh-make-perl-deps/build by default.