On February 29, I sent a message proposing a policy change for -pm packages.
I'll reproduce it below, and then give some important updates.
There was no objection earlier; if anybody has objections to this policy
change, this is the time to state them!
> Dear fink developers,
>
> Last spring, when we introduced versioned -pm packages (-pm560, -pm581, etc),
> in many cases we created "placeholder" packages: a foo-pm package which
> depends on the user's choice of foo-pm560, foo-pm581, etc.
>
> These packages have created problems since then, particularly for users
> upgrading from perl 5.6.0 to perl 5.8.1 (for example, during a 10.2 -> 10.3
> upgrade), since the correct version of the -pm may no longer be installed.
>
> So I propose a policy change: we should "deprecate" the placeholder packages,
> and strive to eliminate them from the active fink trees within a few months.
>
> One implication of this change is that any -pm package which depends on
> a versioned -pm package must be versioned itself. And it probably looks
> like a big burden on package maintainers to maintain separate .info files
> for multiple versions of a -pm package. Happily, though, Dan Macks has
> been working on an extension of the "Type" field in fink which will allow
> us to create multiple versioned -pm packages from a single .info file.
> This tool will help us put the new policy into practice.
>
> I'm bringing this up now, searching for criticism or concensus, so that
> we'll be ready to make the policy change once Dan's tools are in place
> and documented.
>
Well, Dan's tools are in place now, so this is the time to start thinking
about this issue. Since several perl module maintainers have already
abandoned the 10.2-gcc3.3 tree, and since there is no real harm in leaving
things as they are, I propose to restrict this policy change to the 10.3
tree, at least for now.
I have a few things to report. First of all, there will soon be a perl583
package in fink, and we *won't* need to create a bunch of -pm583's in
order to use it: it will be perfectly capable of using -pm581's. In fact,
the only reason to create a -pm583 would be if there were some feature of
perl which is not present in 5.8.1 which is needed by your perl module.
This means that we will essentially have four kinds of -pm's for now:
* unversioned -pm, which should be used UNLESS there is a .bundle file
or the perl module depends on other versioned perl modules
* -pm560's, used by perl 5.6.0
* -pm580's, used by perl 5.8.0
* -pm581's, used by Apple's perl 5.8.1 and fink's perl 5.8.3
(I do not plan to bring perl 5.6.1 forward to 10.3.) When perl 5.10.0
comes out, we'll need another set of -pm's, but we shouldn't need one until
then.
(The reason we can't use -pm580's with perl 5.8.1 is that the
"architecture" string changed from darwin to darwin-multi-2level-threaded.)
At the moment, there are a number of -pm packages which were versioned
unecessarily, that is, there is no .bundle file (the indicator of C code),
and there is no dependency on another versioned package. So I am proposing
that we revert those packages to the old, unversioned style.
I have put new versions of perl560 and perl580, a preliminary version of
perl583, and a score of -pm packages which are closely related to these,
into my experimental/dmrrsn/perlmods directory. The way in which those
particular -pm packages are related will be described in another message.
I have, though, started to implement the above policy with those packages.
One implication of having versioned packages is possible conflicts among
them involving files in /sw/bin or /sw/share/man. My "solution" to this
for now has been to allow the various versions to replace each other,
with the understanding that this replacement is only going to affect bin
and man files. Other solutions could be implemented by the package
maintainers if they wish.
Comments, as always, are very welcome.
-- Dave
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