Re: AptPkg::* + Dpkg::* not in CPAN
On Mar 5, 2010, at 14:48, Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> -=| Emmanuel Rodriguez, Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 11:39:31AM +0100 |=-
>> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Damyan Ivanov <dmn@debian.org> wrote:
>>> My guess is that since using these requires a Debian system,
>>> distributing them outside of Debian makes little sense (to their
>>> authors).
>>
>> Does it? Apt-get has been ported to RPM systems.
>
> Disclaimer (sorry that I haven't made this clear)
> -------------------------------------------------
> I am just guessing, on behalf of the authors. I am not one of them and
> have never heard from them on this subject.
>
>> Also with so many Debian
>> derivates out there that it could be handy.
>
> The derivates in question can (and should) get the modules from their
> package repositories.
In many cases, Ubuntu springs to mind, packages are just transferred wholesale to the derivative distro. Debian has more than 250 derivatives, making the APT system widespread and of significant interest to developers and even powerusers. Perl is part of the base system on many of these systems, even in the embedded world like Maemo (which ships with perl 5.8.3).
In short, I feel it is highly worthwhile to have the debian tools up on CPAN. Even if they are not used directly, people can derive classes from them (I have done this in my work at maemo) and they can study how one creates a tool to wrap a tarball into a deb. There are examples of this on CPAN which would have benefitted from having native debian packages available for study of API's etc.
There is a separate maintenance burden when the debian tools get uploaded to CPAN - someone has to upload the original and keep it current, and address any bugs that pop up in RT. Also, one has to face an odd inertia on the part of the debian perl team which seems to feel that their work is somehow in isolation from the broader perl community, as if there were some kind of firewall between CPAN and debian's package repos.
I feel debian has a bit of an obligation to contribute their tools to the community for others who want to make derivatives and for developers who want to make custom packages or packaging tools for their systems. I realize it is a lot of work to move many of the tools in the debian perl team, and debian in general, up to CPAN, but I think this is a worthy goal which benefits everyone.
Jeremiah
Reply to: