On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 10:27:44AM +0000, Andrew Beverley wrote: > On Tue, 2014-12-30 at 11:47 +0200, Niko Tyni wrote:
> > Packages not using the short form dh rules would need to be modified > > before the patch could be removed. The required steps would be something > > like > > 1) change the Perl policy to recommend NO_PACKLIST + NO_PERLLOCAL > > 2) change debhelper v9 to use them > > 3) add a lintian check and/or do a mass bug filing for the other packages > > 4) wait for (most of) the packages to be fixed > > Just to clarify, is this needed because some packages don't use > debhelper? Presumably once debhelper is changed, there is no need to fix > packages that are built using it? The "old" way to use debhelper was to call the dh_* commands explicitly from debian/rules, and such packages invoked Makefile.PL directly. This common logic was refactorized into debhelper itself with version 9, which introduced the 'dh' command. So there are a lot of packages in Debian still using the old style, and probably quite a few maintainers that prefer it to the new one and aren't planning to change at all. Some Perl package examples that I happen to have around would be libapt-pkg-perl libberkeleydb-perl libpoe-component-server-http-perl Also, cdbs would need changing too. It has the same logic somewhere around /usr/share/cdbs/1/class/perl-makemaker-vars.mk . Then there are some non-CPAN projects that ship things like Perl bindings as part of the source, and use EU::MM to manage those. The Debian packaging of those usually either invokes Makefile.PL from debian/rules or lets the upstream build system do that, possibly patching it slightly. Some examples would be collectd ftpmirror icheck wml > Incidentally, I have just found this, which could be closed as well if > the above are completed. > > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=683533 Right, that's the same issue. Thanks for spotting. > > A champion for this (and also for finishing the PREFIX transition) > > would be very welcome. > > Happy to volunteer, but I'm quite new to all of this, so may need a > little assistance. Thanks! Let's wait a bit for other opinions before starting out. I see NO_PERLLOCAL and NO_PACKLIST were added in EU::MM quite recently, in 2013 (6.75_01, first bundled with Perl 5.19.4.) It clearly makes sense to make dh and cdbs use those. Whether it's feasible to get the perl patch removed depends on how many other packages would need changing, so we'd need an estimate on that. A straightforward, if a bit laborious, way to get such an estimate would be to test rebuild the archive with the perl patch removed, and with "fixed" dh and cdbs packages, and just diffing the package contents. -- Niko Tyni nt...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
