Re: Alien::*

[Joenio Costa <joenio@joenio.me>]

Hi gregor,

On 20-09-2016 12:22, gregor herrmann wrote:
> The whole Alien::* namespace make me a bit unhappy. As I understand
> it the purpose is to download and build "alien", i.e. non-CPAN,
> software, and that's something we neither need nor want in Debian. --
> I know that we already have some Alien::* pieces but I'd rather not
> add more unless it's really necessary.

Yeah, I agree, the download and build process isn't needed on Debian.

I think Alien::* is usefull on Debian only to indicate dependencies from 
Perl modules to any external tool or library.

> That's not necessary in Debian, and probably also won't happen due to
> the dependencies you already added. If Alien::Autotools is a
> dependency of something else you'd like to package, then I suggest to
> check if it can be patched out there and replaced with proper

In that specific case, Alien::Autotools is a compilation dependency for 
SLOCCount, a tool that I'm wrapping around a new Perl module 
Alien::SLOCCount. I need SLOCCount because I'm working on a Perl project 
that depends that.

> As for Alien::Base, I also hope we can avoid at :)

I see your point, maybe I was going the wrong way. See what I was thinking:

As upstream Perl developer, every time I need some external tool I can 
declare a dependency using Alien::* namespace. As a Debian pkg-perl 
developer packaging some peace of module I no need to interpret external 
tool dependency to declare it in debian/control manually. I declare 
dependencies in debian/control the same way the upstream do.