Installing all core Perl modules by perl package

[Petr Pisar]

Hello,

as you know Fedora's perl package does not provide all core modules. Fedora has
perl-core package for that. As you probably know, this is not welcomed by some
people. They expect "perl" package means Perl.

I had a chat with some people from #perl channel ragarding this topic on #fedora-perl
yesterday (around 16:00 UTC). They wanted to have "dnf install perl" to install
"all core" modules because all other distribitions do so.

Actually they were not so sure what "all core" means because when I pointed on
dependencies among core modules and also on non-perl packages they started to
throw ideas like "all but ExtUtils::CBuilder" or "all but files in
perl-devel". Some even came with an idea that nobody needs building XS modules
and we can drop dependencies on GCC toolchain completetely. Or that Debian
actually does not install POD files by default.

I understand their concerns regarding unified user experience. On the other
hand I understand there are people who need Perl broken into RPM packages and
after maintaining Perl for seven years I know that this is the only
sustainable way if we do not want to resign on high quality maintanance (i.e.
do more than just forwarding upstream code.)

Therefore I offered them that Fedora can make "dnf install perl" working as
thay want and it will be implemented by renaming perl-core to perl and
giving a new name to present perl package.

Thus I created this Fedora Change
<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/perl_Package_to_Install_Core_Modul...
naively aiming to Fedora 27.

My plan is to move files form perl subpackage to a new perl-interpreter
subpackage and rename perl-core to perl.

To prevent from installing unneeded packages, all spec files will be
mass-edited to replace explicit dependency from perl to perl-interpreter.

To preserve compatibility, perl-core will be Provided by perl and
"Provides: perl-interpreter" will be pushed to perl in older Fedoras.

And of course updating this packaging guidelines paragraph:

Below is a list of Perl-related build dependencies you may need.
perl – The Perl interpreter must be listed as a build dependency if it is
called in any way, either explicitly via perl or %__perl, or as part of your
package's build system.

to

Below is a list of Perl-related build dependencies you may need.
perl-interpeter – The Perl interpreter must be listed as a build dependency if
it is called in any way, either explicitly via perl-interpreter or %__perl, or as
part of your package's build system.

Any opinions?

-- Petr