Question about current status of perl.

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

Hi.

I know I've asked about perl before, but a few days ago I tried to 
update a machine from hamm to potato by using the "ftp" dselect 
method and it was nearly impossible (oh yes, apt is cool, but 
there is not any official "statement of deprecateness" saying something 
like "it is not required for upgrades to be possible by using the ftp 
method").

Currently, perl-base becomes empty and essential and instead 
we have perl-5.004-base and perl-5.005-base. Same for "perl", which 
now becomes perl-5.004 and perl-5.005.

I understand that we want the ability to install several versioned 
perls at the same time, but if we are going to provide both perl-5.004 and 
perl-5.005 in potato, would not make sense to start the versioned 
numbering scheme at 5.005 instead of doing it at 5.004?

I imagine that the following could be done:

* Rename perl-5.004 back to "perl".
* Rename perl-5.004-base back to "perl-base". perl-base would stop
being essential at this point, but it would provide perl5-base as before.
* Handle the "essentialness" of perl5-base by using base-files, as in awk.

perl-base and perl may become "fake" or simply not exist in woody,
after everybody has upgraded to potato.

Would this not make the upgrade much smoother? [ Not to say possible! ].

Thanks.

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