Subject: Re: perl pkg
To: Geoff Wing <mason@primenet.com.au>
From: Frederick Bruckman <fb@enteract.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 08/05/1999 00:46:43
On 5 Aug 1999, Geoff Wing wrote:

> Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> typed:
> :I noticed our perl package is way behind the latest release. Anyone
> :know who maintains it?

> I suppose it's just a matter of packaging it and testing the other 89
> packages which depend on it.  However it will mean the everyone will
> have to remake/reinstall all of those (up to 89) packages which rely
> on it unless better logic on alternative dependencies can be done in
> bsd.own.mk - maybe RE type like:
> 	DEPENDS=perl-5.00(404|503):${PKGSRCDIR}/lang/perl5 
> Perhaps that was discussed previously?

That doesn't help much. To upgrade, you would still need to do
"pkg_delete -r" and then reinstall all your dependent packages.
Many of the modules will be updated in the new release anyway.

I've been having fun using the "cpan" module's interactive mode. It's
best described as our package system on steroids. Right from a "cpan>"
prompt, you can determine which modules are out-of-date, and then
download, compile and install your choice of new modules, including
CPAN itself! Without quitting it! It also has a single command mode,
for fetching and installing a single module, or building a list of
installed modules, or lists of available modules.

CPAN keeps a nice database of all the installed modules. The
CPAN-updated-CPAN on my own system doesn't contain the versions of the
original distribution modules in it's database, but that's because
perl-5.00404 pre-dates the current state of the CPAN system. It's
reasonable to expect everything to be hunky-dory in the next release.

My idea is to wrap cpan in a NetBSD specific script, so that modules
installed in this way become full package citizens. All the p5-*
packages will then reduce to one line "cpan" invokations, and modules
for which no p5-* directory exists will get an entry in the database,
as if one did.

Little if any change to the present database will be required,
although from looking into the guts of CPAN, some may be inspired.

Comments?