Where should go Perl libraries files?

[Christian Jodar]

Hello,

During the review of a new package that I submitted [1], there was an issue
with the Perl libraries used by the package. The problem is that this package
contains some libraries that are provided as .pm files. So they are not binary
files and are platform-independant.

The question is now: Where should go these files?

According to packaging guidelines [2], we should refer to FHS for this. In
these guidelines [3],  /usr/lib should be used for "object files, libraries,
and internal binaries". Then we have some libraries here, so they could go in
/usr/lib.

But the 22nd note [4] says that "Miscellaneous architecture-independent
application-specific static files and subdirectories must be placed in
/usr/share". And this could be applied also to the .pm files.

Here we could be lost...

When reading the 23rd note, we find an example of files that could be in a
subdirectory of /usr/lib: "For example, the perl5 subdirectory for Perl 5
modules and libraries". And this applies directly to the problem we have here.

So I'd think that .pm files could be in the lib directories (and that's where
the upstream application wants to find them). But I may be wrong. In any
cases, I think this should be explicitely written somewhere on the Wiki.

Thank you for your comments,

Christian Jodar.


[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=211726
[2]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#head-e1c5548cbbe551c7a43d375c524ab2ea0188557e
[3]
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLIBLIBRARIESFORPROGRAMMINGANDPA
[4] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN1389
[5] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN1394