Bug#619275: Perl Policy change to document major version upgrade trigger
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.1.0
Dear Policy maintainers,
A not-so-recent bug report, #230308, raised the issue of how a long-running
program which would be broken (until restart) by a major Perl package upgrade
(eg from 5.10 to 5.12) could be notified of such a restart. There was a rough
consensus on that bug report that, once triggers were available, they could
be used as means to this end, as proposed on that bug report.
I recently posted a message about this issue to debian-devel
(<20110226190032.GF4803@urchin.earth.li>) which was met by a resounding
silence. Evidently this isn't a very exciting proposal, but perhaps this
does not mean it is not worth implementing. I would like to enable a
graceful resolution to such problematic situations as spamassassin silently
breaking during a partial upgrade (the topic of the original bug report).
As such, perl 5.12.3-2, currently in experimental, implements the perl
half of this fix, by triggering the perl-major-upgrade trigger if it is
upgraded from a version older than 5.12.0. I've tested this against a
modification of the spamassassin package which implements the receiving
side of the proposal, with success. The implementation is for all
practical purposes identical to the proof of concept posted by Niko to
the original bug.
My proposed modification to the Perl policy is a new section entitled
"Upgrades", attached as a patch against git.
Thanks,
Dominic.
--
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)
>From 712364db7aa6b55b181ada89edc887fb414a171a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:11:29 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Describe the Perl upgrade trigger
Signed-off-by: Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li>
---
perl-policy.sgml | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/perl-policy.sgml b/perl-policy.sgml
index b9f3277..47cf9f6 100644
--- a/perl-policy.sgml
+++ b/perl-policy.sgml
@@ -461,6 +461,26 @@ perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ldopts
package must depend upon it explicitly.
</p>
</sect>
+
+ <sect id="perl_upgrades">
+ <heading>Perl Package Upgrades</heading>
+ <p>
+ Starting from <package>perl</package> 5.12.3-2, a dpkg trigger
+ named <var>perl-major-upgrade</var> will be triggered by the
+ postinst of the <package>perl</package> package during major
+ upgrades. Some examples of things which consitute a major upgrade
+ are an upgrade which would change the value of versioned
+ directories in <tt>@INC</tt>, or one which changes <tt>abiname</tt>.
+ Any package may declare an interest in the trigger, especially
+ packages including long-running daemons which would stop working
+ until restart.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is suggested that such packages include an appropriate section
+ in their postinst to handle the trigger by restarting relevant
+ daemons or notifying users of further action.
+ </p>
+ </sect>
</chapt>
<appendix id="perl6">
--
1.7.0.4
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