Breaking perl...

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 18:12 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-04-16 at 11:37 -0400, Robin Norwood wrote:
> > So,
> > 
> > I was waiting for feedback on the latest iteration of the perl spec file
> > before proceeding, but I haven't really gotten any - I guess people are
> > generally busy with their day jobs, etc. 
> 
> > [3 proposals]
> 
> That's what I've been enforcing in recent reviews is users to BR those
> perl(XX) modules their packages actually require when building.
> 
> 
> The advantage of this approach would be long term stability, because
> packages then would use their "real requirements" instead of rpm helper
> "properties" (such as "perl-devel") between which "real requirements"
> could be moved at any time.

*nod* perl-devel is really only "the devel files for perl(Core)". The
fact that it depends on all the other perl-included modules (e.g. CPAN)
is convenient, but not a long term fix. 

> One detail I am not yet clear about:
> 
> Shall Fedora be allowed to provide separate perl modules, which also are
> available as separate CPAN packages, but so far have been built as part
> of the main perl src.rpm?
> 
> If yes, how? What would be the restrictions on EVR?

My concern is that a newer version of a module that came bundled with
perl won't work well (or at all) with that version of perl. If we update
past it and perl stops working as expected (or won't rebuild properly),
we're in dire straits.

~spot