On 08/13/2009 10:36 AM, Marcela Maslanova wrote: > Hello, > our "new" split of upstream perl package into perl-core and many > other perl-Some-Module was criticised at p5p > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.perl.perl5.porters/72031 > > I'm not sure who decided the split and why we did this, but someone > should answer reasonably which means better than I did ;-) > Have members of this mailing list ideas if we should change packaging, > name or let it be as it is? I'm the one who did the split, and I'll go over to p5p and try to explain it, but I'll put it here first: At the time of the split, we had a LOT of packages which depended on simply "perl". We also had a lot of people who wanted individual perl modules updated that live within the "perl tarball", which is a complicated task to undertake. By splitting the perl modules out into separate subpackages we were at least able to allow people to build newer RPMs. In addition, the split had the added benefit that people who did not need nor want all of the components built with perl could get a system without them. This lowered the default Fedora installation footprint. At the same time, there were cries that we needed some way for folks to be able to get the "full perl experience as intended by Perl upstream", so I created the "perl-core" metapackage, which has hardcoded requires to pull in all of the perl bits that were previously all packaged together in the monolithic "perl" RPM. Also, we were getting a LOT of bugs from people who were installing things from CPAN which conflicted in ways with the Fedora packages. It is worth noting that since then, we have configured perl such that CPAN installed packages go into /usr/local and are preferred over system packages. The logic path was that users who wanted CPAN could still easily get it, but they were now making a conscious choice to do so, and could no longer claim that they didn't know what they were doing (a very common complaint in Fedora bug reports). Okay, so with all of that said, let me discuss what would happen if we were to switch the naming of perl and perl-core tomorrow: * Any packages which still have "Requires: perl" , rather than a more specific "Requires: perl(foo::bar)" would suddenly have a much larger installation footprint. (Thankfully, I think this is probably almost never the case in current Fedora as a result of many cleanups.) * New users who do not read the descriptions (which, unfortunately, are far more than those who do) and run: yum install perl, will get more perl modules than they possibly want or need. I realize that this is a hotly debatable point. * Existing users who are currently happy with the focused perl packages that they have installed (only those which are explicitly needed by dependencies) will suddenly get a lot more perl subpackages which they are not using upon the next update/upgrade. This leads to cries of "OMG BLOAT!!!1!". I see four possible courses of action at this point: 1. Go back to a monolithic perl. I do not like this option, and I would not recommend it. 2. Reword the descriptions to make it much clearer that the "perl" binary package, and the dependencies it has, is not the complete "core" as provided in the perl tarballs, it is simply the minimal necessary for /usr/bin/perl to run. (We probably want to do this anyways.) 3. Swap the perl and perl-core names, with the above results. 4. Rename perl / perl-core to something more obvious. We could convert what is now "perl" to "perl-minimal", for example, but what if someone runs "yum install perl"? What should they get? The minimal or the "everything in the tarball" experience? (When this split was first done, because of the hardcoded dependencies on "perl", we chose to make it be the minimal experience to minimize the install footprint of Fedora and its applications, but now, I think we should be able to get away from that). As to the cries that Red Hat is somehow "destroying perl", I can honestly say that is not the case. The perl package has several active maintainers and Fedora has an active perl packaging community which works very hard to deliver the best possible perl experience for Fedora users. Yes, we hit bugs, and make mistakes, but we are constantly trying to fix those bugs as well. Keep in mind that Fedora was one of the first distributions to adopt 5.10.0, which required quite a lot of effort and work with the p5p community. Constructive and polite comments and discussion are welcomed, either on fedora-perl-devel-list or on p5p. Thanks, Tom "spot" Callaway -- Fedora Extras Perl SIG http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/Perl Fedora-perl-devel-list mailing list Fedora-perl-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-perl-devel-list
