Re: All those Perl CPAN Modules...

[Carey Evans <c.evans@clear.net.nz>]

"Brian S. Julin" <bri@mojo.calyx.net> writes:

[snip]

> So all we would need to do is write our own version of MakeMaker that, 
> in addition to the usual targets like "test" "dist" and "install", also
> automatically created rules for construction of a "deb" and "dsc" 
> target.

We'd really just need an ExtUtils::MM_Debian which overrides a few key
methods and inherits the rest from ExtUtils::MM_Unix, the same as the
OS specific things like MM_VMS.

> I propose that we get one person that knows a lot about Debian
> package development, one experienced Perl module publisher, and
> a few ok perl 5 OO programmers (like me :-) together to work this out.
> I'll gleefully entertain any e-mails to that respect.  Shouldn't
> take too too long I would guess.

I'd like to help work on this.  I'm not sure if I'm an `experienced'
Perl modules publisher, but I do have one of my own to play around
with.

After thinking about it for a while, there seem to be two possible
approaches:

 1) Have one new target which creates and populates a debian/
    subdirectory, much like deb-make.  All other targets remain the
    same.  The modules can be put under debian/tmp by:
        make ; make pure_perl_install PREFIX="${PWD}/debian/tmp/usr"
    The source package includes the .diff containing the generated
    files, and this target is never used again - normal package
    maintenance applies now.

 2) Put the required targets into the generated Makefile, maybe using
    a pure_debian_install which puts it in debian/tmp, and appropriate
    build and binary targets (or debian_build etc).  I can't quite see
    where a source package would come into this.

Some manual intervention would be necessary in any case for
determining copyright and (version) dependencies, since AFAIK CPAN
doesn't do this automatically.

-- 
                Carey Evans  <*>  c.evans@clear.net.nz

	    "Lies, damn lies, and computer documentation."


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