Final decision on perl-devel?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2007-03-08 at 17:22 -0500, Robin Norwood wrote:
> Robin Norwood <rnorwood at redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> writes:
> >
> >> On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 12:20 -0500, Robin Norwood wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> I noticed a further problems:
> >>
> >> On FC6 with a locally build perl*-14.1 (including my most recent
> >> patches) in a local repo in addition to the FC's core+extras,
> >>
> >> yum install 'perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)'
> >> fails:
> >>
> >> # rpm -q --whatprovides 'perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)'
> >> no package provides perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)
> >>
> >> # yum install 'perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)'
> >> ...
> >> Nothing to do
> >>
> >> # repoquery --whatprovides 'perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)'
> >> perl-4:5.8.8-10.i386
> >> perl-devel-4:5.8.8-14.1.i386
> >>
> >> # yum install perl-devel
> >> ...
> >> Installed: perl-devel.i386 4:5.8.8-14.1
> >>
> >>
> >> Seems to me as if yum can't properly handle this split.
> >>
> >> May-be, it can't handle resolving a property (perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker))
> >> being provided by different packages perl rsp. perl-devel.
> >
> > Yeah, maybe we need to tweak the dependencies here.  I'll poke around
> > and see if I can figure it out, and maybe ask the Yum guys for advice.
> 
> It looks like you unearthed a bug in yum.  Reproduced and filed a bug
> here:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=231549
> 
> I don't think this should be a blocker for the perl/perl-devel split,
I am not sure about this, because ...

> since:
> 
> o It's a yum bug.
> o perl-devel is still installable with 'yum install perl-devel'
> o In many cases (if the user has something installed that depends on
> something that only perl-devel will provide), the user will get
> perl-devel anyway.
> 
> What do you think?
> 

.. this issue renders using

BuildRequires: perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)
(The "correct" BuildRequires for MakeMaker based perl-modules)

non-functional and (bogusly) forces packagers to resort to using
BuildRequires: perl-devel
or
BuildRequires: perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker) perl-devel

instead.

Background: I have another patch to the perl package pending, which
physically separates ExtUtils::MakeMaker, CPAN, Test::Simple and
Test::Harness from "perl-devel". It resolves the issue of some packages
(e.g. mod_perl) to directly depend on perl-devel at run-time.

Ralf