unite perl and perl-modules?

[Niko Tyni]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 10:52:43PM +0300, Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote:
> Hello Perl maintainers!

I don't think Brendan is subscribed to the Alioth list, so CC'ing
him explicitly. I've usually used perl at packages.debian.org to reach
all interested parties FWIW.

> After a private discussion with Niko Tyni, I am stepping as Perl co-maintainer
> for Debian.

Thanks for the initiative.

> The topic which I want to arise today is dealing with #495394, an important
> bug about circular dependency 'perl <-> perl-modules'. I propose to unite
> these two into one 'perl' package.

Are you aware of the recent related discussion in #536384, which I forgot
to clone? It seems I'm the most conservative here. Brendan already said
he's in favour of merging the packages.

I don't have any strong arguments against the merge, other than that
it's broadly the right thing to do to have the arch-indep parts in an
arch:all package.

Whether the circular dependency is a bug at all is debatable.

> Pros:
> 
> 1. No circular dependency anymore.
> 2. No more name confusion ('perl' isn't a whole Perl, and both 'perl' and
> 'perl-modules' contain Perl modules).
> 3. One less version entry in Packages.

4. Having a new upstream version FTBFS doesn't break sid on that architecture
anymore (the most recent example is #548943).

> Cons:
> 
> 1. +15 MiB to each architecture mirror, as new 'perl' package will be
> architecture:any.
> 2. ~132 packages in unstable need to be updated to (build-)depend on perl, not
> perl-modules.
> 3. new 'Conflicts: perl-modules' entry in the 'perl' package
> 
> Is there something I missed? Thoughts?

Making perl-modules a transitional empty package that depends on perl
(but not vice versa) would make 2) a smooth transition. (Making perl just
Provide perl-modules would break versioned dependencies on perl-modules.)
-- 
Niko