Re: Bug#987615: Bug#985957: usrmerge has 47.3MB of dependencies

[Niko Tyni <ntyni@debian.org>]

On Thu, Oct 07, 2021 at 03:59:11AM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Aug 2021 07:46:49 +0100 Niko Tyni <ntyni@debian.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 12:11:26AM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > 
> > > I see no reason to move the usrmerge dependencies to perl-base: usrmerge
> > > is supposed to be installed, run and then removed again.
> > > If something is moved to perl-base then it will use space on every 
> > > Debian system.
> > 
> > My suggestion in #987615 (which I also copied to usrmerge@pdo, being
> > unaware of #985957) is to introduce separate packages of the usrmerge
> > dependencies, and limit their dependencies to perl-base only. This does
> > not grow perl-base and can be phased out later, so it does not impose
> > a permanent cost on everybody.
> 
> Seems to me, that simply vendoring the necessary perl modules in the
> usrmerge package would be a better, simpler and more lightweight approach to
> packaging those all invidually as separate packages.

Yeah, you're probably right, particularly as I haven't got around to doing
much about this so far. I'm fine with that approach FWIW.

I did try out the separate package plan at home at one point, and got
things working with seven modified or introduced packages (well, eight
if you count the usrmerge package too.) Here's some notes, maybe they
will save somebody some work even if this is not the chosen path.

There's two branches to the usrmerge dependencies:

libautodie-perl (would need a separate package)
    libif-perl  (would need a separate package)
    libtie-refhash-perl (would need a separate package)

libfile-find-rule-perl (would need dependency modifications)
    libfile-find-perl  (would need a separate package)
    libnumber-compare-perl (would need dependency modifications)
    libtext-glob-perl (would need dependency modifications)

Happily all these modules are pure Perl, which makes things a bit easier.

The libnumber-compare-perl and libtext-glob-perl modifications are trivial
(override dh_perl to dh_perl -d). I suggest modifying at least those
two packages instead of bundling them.

I'm copying the debian-perl list for some visibility.
-- 
Niko