Re: YAPC North America talk on dh-make-perl vs. CPANPLUS

[Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah@jeremiahfoster.com>]

On Jun 10, 2009, at 16:36, Guy Hulbert wrote:

> On Wed, 2009-10-06 at 10:21 -0400, Guy Hulbert wrote:
> > It might be useful to review: CPANPLUS::Dist::Deb
> > to see if it checks under /usr before installing things in /usr/ 
> > local.
>
> Hmmm.... they're recommending:
> deb http://debian.pkgs.cpan.org/debian unstable main
>
> Let's see:
> wget http://debian.pkgs.cpan.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz
> zless Packages.gz
>
> Hmmm....
> Maintainer: cpanplus@example.com
>
> Not a particularly useful email address ...
>
> Let's look at a package: cpan-libfile-path-perl_2.04-1_all.deb
> wget ...
> ar x cpan-libfile-path-perl_2.04-1_all.deb
> tar ztf data.tar.gz
>
> So it's under /usr/local but the docs are under /usr:
>
> ./usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/File/Path.pm
> ./usr/local/man/man3/File::Path.3pm
> ./usr/share/doc/cpan-libfile-path-perl/README.Debian
>
> Hmm... I'd suggest that they use /usr/local/share/doc to avoid  
> confusion
> but I don't suppose debian policy has much to say here.


I think the key is in fact the debian policy. If you want a quick n  
dirty package, you can use the CPANPLUS tool I suppose, but if you  
want DSFG safe, perl policy compliant, license and copyright checked  
package, then you want a deb made by debian perl. (Or make it  
yourself. :)

Perhaps code can be written to adhere to the perl and debian policies,  
but I suspect that will never be done since that is a moving target,  
or it should be. The policy should be evolving as best practices are  
defined.

Maybe what is needed is the modularization of dh-make-perl in to perl  
modules and released on CPAN?

Jeremiah