Re: Proposed removal of arch-perl (libarch-perl)

[Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com>]

Mikhael,

I'm really embarrassed now, for not having asked you about this issue
first. I'll take a look at fixing the libarch-perl package
immediately, and look into adopting the other related packages based
on it (assuming they are Perl code).

Perhaps something you can consider doing is having tests skipped
(rather than passed) with a message like "Please install tla to run
tests"... Otherwise, as a Perl developer, I know it's difficult to
specify "make sure <external library> is installed first", and
unfortunately, the current package doesn't leave hints as to what it
requires (which I guess is partly due to us not running the tests at
build time).

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Mikhael Goikhman <migo@homemail.com> wrote:
> I am aware of the problem. Once you (testers) install tla (GNU Arch)
> package, it will likely be all PASSes. :) Of course I may make tests
> silently pass without tla installed, but then this perl library is
> useless on such systems, so it is hard to decide what is better.
>
> The reason to remove this package may be that nearly 100% or so users
> don't use GNU Arch. But other than this it should be a fully
> functional library. (At least I use it almost daily.)
I don't consider this a reason to remove a package, really. As long as
a package is useful to at least a handful of users and isn't totally
ridiculous to maintain, I think it's worth keeping in Debian.

Thanks for your advice!

Cheers,

Jonathan