Bug#810823: perl: break .ph files into a separate (source?) package

[Niko Tyni]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 08:13:32PM +0000, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:

> I'm not really clear on what splitting these into separate packages
> (which sounds like a considerable amount of work) really gains us?
> The size gain in the perl package (around 50kB as far as I can see) on
> its own doesn't quite justify it for me.
> 
> Even if we do want to produce a separate binary package, I'm even
> less that a separate source package is justified, but maybe I missed
> something.

They are an abomination that I'd like to decouple from src:perl, so that
they could live or get phased out on their own. The only reasons for
bundling them seem to be historical, and they have very few actual uses.

I think libperl4-corelibs-perl is comparable, but that was split out
upstream, which is not going to happen for the .ph files as they are
a Debian addition.

They are also one of the few things left that cause grief for cross
building src:perl, and I'm somewhat frustrated by that, probably more
than I should be.

You may well be right that the splitting is not worth the effort,
particularly as it would cause work for other people. Thanks for the
reality check.

I'm still slightly undecided about closing this bug, so I think I'll
defer that and take a bit of time to think it over once more.
-- 
Niko