Re: perl versioned Provides in sid again

[Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li>]

On Sat, Dec 08, 2018 at 04:57:19PM +0100, gregor herrmann wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Dec 2018 17:55:55 +0200, Niko Tyni wrote:
> 
> > just a note that I've re-introduced versioned Provides in
> > perl/perl-base/perl-modules-5.28 with 5.28.1-3.  
> 
> Yay! Thanks Niko.
> 
> > No immediate action is required from packages affected by this change,
> > but they can now gradually start moving from the current idiom
> >  Depends: perl (>= x) | libfoo-bar-perl (>= y)
> > to just the 'libfoo-bar-perl (>= y)' part. This will need some changes
> > to lintian recommendations as well.

I've submitted #917967 to drop the outdated recommendation.
(I've also proposed a policy update in #761219).

> And a change in libconfig-model-dpkg-perl, and maybe also in
> dh-make-perl.

There are two modifications that could be made to the logic for
constructing depends relating to dual lived modules:

1) remove the alternate depends on perl when a versioned dep is needed
2) always depend on the virtual package name, regardless of whether a
   version is needed

2) is appealing because it removes the special casing completely, but
would probably make quite a few fields longer. Maybe with automated
tooling this is okay, though.

Thoughts? Note: I am not really volunteering to update the tooling,
that's best done with those more familiar with them.

Cheers,
Dominic.