Fedora's minimal build root contains perl. There is a reasonable request <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1158860> to remove the perl in order to minimize the build root. (The x86_64 F25 build root occupies 527 MB now, 20 MB of that are perl packages.) The reason why perl is there is the rpm-build package. The Requires dependency tree looks like: rpm-build perl-generators perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.22.1) perl(Fedora::VSP) perl perl-macros system-rpm-config (a Provide) redhat-rpm-config perl-srpm-macros While perl-srpm-macros's presence is intended, perl-generators' presence is unwanted. On technical level, the reason is the rpm-build binary package requires perl-generators explicitely. It's there for backward compatibility. Simply removing the dependency removes perl from minimal build root. But the compatibility is important. Without perl-generators in a build root no Perl dependencies are generated into binary packages. To fix it, every Perl package must build-require perl-generators. This change will go through a Fedora system wide change process and Perl packaging guidelines update. I'd like to implement it in Fedora 25. Few weeks ago, me, Contyk and Jitka were thinking about the new packaging guidelines. We concluded that the guidelines should contain only the necessary minimum and best practices should be documented on freely updatable wiki page. We found these interesting packages: perl-generators requires perl and some other modules perl /usr/bin/perl perl-libs libperl.so and essencial modules and perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_) perl-devel requires gcc for header files perl-macros requires perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_) now perl-srpm-macros no dependencies Guidelines should describe that: (1) You must build-require perl-generators if you install a Perl code to ensure run-time depencies are automatically generated. Then there are other rules that are actually implied by the generic guidelines (require everything what you use) that could or could not go the the guidelines as: (2) You must build-require perl-macros if you use a macro provided by them. (3) You must build-require perl if you execute the perl interpreter at build-time. (4) You must build-require perl-devel if you build XS code. Questionable are %__perl and %perl_vendorlib-like macros, what macros are provided by perl-srpm-macros and what macros are provided by perl-srpm-macros. %__perl and %perl_vendorlib macros come from rpm. Former rpm Fedora maintainer claimed he want to own the macros forever. But the truth is they do not work without installed perl. And rpm does not require perl. The division between perl-macros and perl-srpm-macros is, in my vision, defined by requirement on perl interpreter. perl-srpm-macros will never require perl. The question is where to put all the neat macros I published on this mailing list in the previous month (the version normalization etc.). The version normalization will go into perl-srpm-macros as it it necessary for creating source RPM packages. If we implement normalization in F25, we should mention it in the guidelines: (5) Perl module versions must be normalized with %perl_v macro like "BuildRequires: perl(Module) >= %{perl_v 1.2}". We could also make the guidelines less how-to and more descriptive by explaining the normalization algorithm and allowing packagers to do the normalization manually (like listing run-time dependencies manually). But I'm not sure if it were helpful. Back to the build-requires. I can add "BuildRequires: perl-generators" into all spec files that run-requires or provides perl(). This can be performed even without mass rebuild. I'd like to hear if this approach (adding "BuildRequires: perl-generators" everywhere) is fine. For example, a spec file for architecture specific package would need: BuildRequires: perl for "perl Makefile.PL" BuildRequires: perl-devel for building XS code BuildRequires: perl-generators for generating dependencies BuildRequires: perl-macros for %?perl_default_filter It looks like a lot of copy and paste code. On the other hand, It allows to write spec files that do not need all the Perl packaging features. For example, an package that only installs a perl script can be happy with only: BuildRequires: perl-generators for generating dependencies -- Petr
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