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Re: Perl CPAN<->dpkg connectivity?



Amos Shapira <amos@gezernet.co.il> wrote:
> 1. Install CPAN or something based on it under Debian.

> 2. Allow debian packages which require specific perl modules to list
>    these modules as regular debian packages (e.g. "cpan-net-www" or
>    "cpan-net-snmp"?).

> 3. When a debian package requires such a module, somehow make a
>    "module installation" program to run CPAN, download and install the
>    module directly from the CPAN archive and add this module to the
>    "provides" list of a package specially fabricated for this (e.g.
>    have a package call "perl5-modules" and add all modules added this
>    way to the list of packages provided by this package).

This is in the right direction, but is missing on a few fundamentals,
like the distinction between stable and unstable.

What I'd like to see is a hamm.cpan.debian.org which automatically
packaged everything that shows up in the cpan archive based on the hamm
release using the cpan- naming convention.

This would require:

(1) An understanding with the CPAN archive maintainers that this is a
good thing (that is: if they have reasons to think this isn't a good
thing, we should accept their judgement).

(2) A dedicated machine with some custom mirroring software. [And note
that I'm implicitly assuming that we'll be setting up a similar machine
for future releases -- or maybe the one machine will perform double duty
and it'll just be a dns thing.]

(3) Someone to watch over the machine and help sort out machine-specific
issues. [Hopefully, this person will also help with overall cpan quality
issues as well.]

(4) some way of deciding what packages are stable vs. unstable.
[Hopefully cpan administrators can come up with this? If they get good
enough, this dedicated autocompiling mirror concept will become obsolete
at some point.]

(5) Some experience.

The last one is the kicker, of course. I know for a fact that some cpan
packages are flawed (I got taken off a job for not handling the flaws
in a cpan wais package expediently). And, of course, debian's automated
package building tools are far from mature. All of this will make for
some interesting issues to resolve.

-- 
Raul


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