Perl Modules Conundrum

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 08:44:05AM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote:

> Scott Kitterman [2008-01-07 11:41 -0500]:
> > Currently there are Perl modules (at least libfile-temp-perl and 
> > libtest-harness-perl) that are provided by the perl-modules package in Perl 
> > and also packaged separately in a later version.  It is currently impossible 
> > to build against these separate packages on the buildds.

> > What happens is that sbuild checks to see if it has such a module installed, 
> > determines that it does, because the module is provided by perl-modules.  
> > Later the build will fail due to dependency problems because the version is 
> > insufficient.

> Right, and this is a bug we should fix, since it does not just affect
> Perl. If sbuild sees a versioned dependency, it should not look for
> already available Provides: since these are not versioned. Since this
> does not seem to affect Debian's sbuild,

The packages in question are arch: all, so have never been seen by the
Debian sbuild.

I agree that it's a bug that warrants fixing, but I also think it's wrong to
ship two copies of the perl module, at two different versions, resulting in
who-knows-what subtle behavior changes based on which packages are
installed.

So fixing sbuild IMHO only fixes one of the bugs that have been brought to
light here.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org