Re: Bug#774068: ExtUtils-MakeMaker and NO_PERLLOCAL

[Damyan Ivanov <dmn@debian.org>]

-=| Niko Tyni, 30.12.2014 11:47:23 +0200 |=-
> (cc'ing the debian-perl list)
> 
> On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 08:38:56AM +0000, Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> > -=| Andrew Beverley, 29.12.2014 00:16:14 +0000 |=-
> > > Is there any harm in having the option in there, especially as the
> > > upstream version of EU-MM defaults to creating perllocal.pod files, and
> > > provides this option to prevent it happening?
> > 
> > As I see it, adding and maintaining a line to 2000+ debian/rules files 
> > is a bit of a burden. Not an unbearable one, but we embraced the tiny 
> > dh rules exactly because they made things really simple.
> > 
> > > Presumably Debian's version uses a patched version of EU-MM, which was
> > > required before this option was available.
> > 
> > I wonder if debhelper would be the right place to add this. This would 
> > solve the problem this patch solves, and maybe also simplify the patch 
> > in the perl package package [1]
> > 
> > [1] 
> > https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/perl/perl.git/tree/debian/patches/debian/no_packlist_perllocal.diff
> 
> Right, that seems like the right long term approach to me. Ideally,
> debhelper could pass both NO_PACKLIST and NO_PERLLOCAL to EU::MM, and
> the above patch wouldn't be needed at all.
> 
> This would be a similar transition to the (still unfinished) PREFIX one,
> see #579461 and 
>  https://lintian.debian.org/tags/debian-rules-makemaker-prefix-is-deprecated.html
> 
> Packages not using the short form dh rules would need to be modified
> before the patch could be removed. The required steps would be something
> like
>  1) change the Perl policy to recommend NO_PACKLIST + NO_PERLLOCAL
>  2) change debhelper v9 to use them
>  3) add a lintian check and/or do a mass bug filing for the other packages
>  4) wait for (most of) the packages to be fixed
>  5) change the Perl policy to require NO_PACKLIST + NO_PERLLOCAL
>  6) remove the patch from the perl package

I've been thinking about this. Even made the changes in debhelper¹ and 
considered a possible wording for the Perl policy.

 ¹ https://salsa.debian.org/dmn/debhelper/-/commits/b9cdc9696464f67f0c75479383a002ff666ffd6b

Then it occured to me that this is a titanic work that would take 
months if not years - rebuilding the archive, analyzing the results, 
providing patches to the packages that need them and track their 
progress.

All this so that a patch is dropped from Debian's EU:MM and packages 
created with dh-make-perl could be built in a rather non-standard 
environment.

And perhaps the other patches to Debian's EU:MM also have some purpose 
that would still be missing, so another round of the same would be 
needed.

Somehow, to me it seems that the gain is not worth the effort. By 
a huge margin.

So how about this instead:

Add a special option to dh-make-perl like '--pristine-upstream-eumm' 
that causes it to make whatever changes are necessary to the resulting 
package for it to build with the non-standard envronment. Including 
a warning to the docs that such a package is not intented for the 
official Debian archive.

Andrew, are you still interested in this and willing to provide 
a merge request/patch that provides such an option?

If you have solved the issue by other means (e.g. --data-dir), then 
perhaps we should just close this bugreport.


-- Damyan