tl;dr: Let's make dh-make-perl source format '3.0 (native)'.
Currently dh-make-perl is a non-native package; its d/watch file
points to https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=30274 ;
additionally it's also on the CPAN:
https://metacpan.org/release/DhMakePerl
In practice, the git repo is the authoritative source; in order to
create a tarball, `make orig' has to be invoked, and at release time
this tarball is then uploaded to Alioth and the CPAN. - This has
several drawbacks and problems:
- It's quite some work to make a relase;
- which is almost exclusively done by Damyan (thanks!), esp. for
reasons of CPAN permissions;
- the tarballs on Alioth pretend that this is the upstream for the
package while in reality it's just an afterthought; and I can't
image that anybody would download the tarball from there when it's
in the archive (or on snapshots.d.o) anyway;
- DhMakePerl can't be installed from the CPAN because of some
Debian-specific modules and tools [0]; also there are 2 changelogs;
- developping is tedious as each build needs a new tarball first.
dh-make-perl was a native package until 0.66-1 / 19 Apr 2010; but I
don't remember why we changed it 6 years ago …
I think switching back to a native package makes sense, saves work,
stops pretentions and assumptions which were never true, and also
seems "logically correct". Therefore I tentatively propose to change
the source format, and actually also to remove the tarballs from
Alioth (although they don't hurt as historical artifacts from the
non-native era), and to remove DhMakePerl from the CPAN (move it to
the BackPAN or however this all works).
Thoughts?