Raphael Hertzog wrote: > Le Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 04:14:18AM +0200, Martin Schulze écrivait: > > Another solution would be a) to postpone the freeze for some time or b) > > allow fixed perl uploads within the freeze. > > b) would be fine for me. Because perl uploads will not introduce any > security holes and because packages will only be modified in the sense > that they will use a different directory.
That "only" is a large source of packaging bugs. In fact, the (IMO) most annoying upgrade problem in hamm was a pathname problem: two packages had moved to a different directory at the last minute, and the auto upgrade script hadn't been modified to match. I think we should fall back on perl 5.004, and only move to 5.005 when there's a real plan for upgrading cleanly. Many core utilities rely on perl, as do many maintainerscripts. This problem will *not* go away when the perl packages have been rebuilt -- the upgrade process itself will break. People will be upgrading from hamm to slink when we release it, and they will run into problems like update-inetd breaking halfway through a mass upgrade. Richard Braakman