Proposed patch to perl for f8 - remove Requires on perl-devel

[Robin Norwood]

Hi,

This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
Comments?

(Ok, actually the patch is already applied, but I haven't built anything
yet.)



-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

[Jose Pedro Oliveira]

Robin Norwood wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
>  the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
>  Comments? 
If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are installed
by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons).

jpo
-- 
José Pedro Oliveira
* mailto:[e-mail] * http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/members/jpo/ *

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Sat, 2007-06-02 at 16:14 +0100, Jose Pedro Oliveira wrote:
>  Robin Norwood wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  > 
>  > This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
>  > the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
>  > Comments? 
+1 
>  If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are
> installed
>  by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons). 
And you know that I
disagree with you.

Ralf

[Jan Pazdziora]

On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 04:14:15PM +0100, Jose Pedro Oliveira wrote:
>  > 
>  > This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
>  > the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
>  > Comments?
>  
>  If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are installed
>  by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons). 
Will the net effect be that the core modules will not be installed, or 
just the fact that they get installed via independent rpm (and thus 
upgradable independently)?

-- 
Jan Pazdziora | adelton at #satellite*, #brno
Satellite Sustaining Engineering, Red Hat

[Robin Norwood]

Jan Pazdziora <jpazdziora(a)redhat.com&gt; writes:

>  On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 04:14:15PM +0100, Jose Pedro Oliveira wrote:
> > > 
> > > This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
> > > the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
> > > Comments?
> > 
> > If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are installed
> > by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons).
>
>  Will the net effect be that the core modules will not be installed, or 
>  just the fact that they get installed via independent rpm (and thus 
>  upgradable independently)? 
If we manipulate comps.xml as I suggest in another post, we could
include them by default whenever perl is installed.  Otherwise they
would not be installed unless specified.

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

[Jose Pedro Oliveira]

Jan Pazdziora wrote:
>  On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 04:14:15PM +0100, Jose Pedro Oliveira wrote:
> >> This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
> >> the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
> >> Comments?
> > If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are installed
> > by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons).
>  
>  Will the net effect be that the core modules will not be installed, or  
Several core modules - CPAN, ExtUtils::MakeMaker, Test::* - wouldn't
be installed and that would make life miserable for some people.
A couple of examples:

* users wouldn't be able to install perl modules in their homedirs
  as CPAN/ExtUtils::MakeMaker/Test::* aren't there.  This is particular
  critical in computer labs (at least here).

* people that has to maintain/install perl applications in heterogeneous
  systems (several linux distros, macosx, win32, ...) wouldn't
  be able to run their installations scripts, run test code, etc.
  (again in some systems you don't have access to the
  root/system account).

* all perl specfiles would have to be modified/reviewed in order to
  start adding the splitted perl core modules to their build
  requirements list (a big waste of packagers time).

>  just the fact that they get installed via independent rpm (and thus 
>  upgradable independently)?
>   
Several perl core modules have already been splitted. As you can see
the current perl specfile already generates the following rpms:

  perl-5.8.8-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-CPAN-1.76_02-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-devel-5.8.8-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-ExtUtils-Embed-1.26-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker-6.30-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-libs-5.8.8-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-suidperl-5.8.8-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-Test-Harness-2.56-18.fc7.i386.rpm
  perl-Test-Simple-0.62-18.fc7.i386.rpm

The splitted core modules should be independently upgradable.

jpo

-- 
José Pedro Oliveira
* mailto:[e-mail] * http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/members/jpo/ *

[Robin Norwood]

Jose Pedro Oliveira <jpo(a)di.uminho.pt&gt; writes:

>  Robin Norwood wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
> > the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
> > Comments?
>
>  If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are installed
>  by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons). 
Well, how about a compromise - for F7, we added perl-devel to the
package groups in comps.xml so that it was installed by default whenever
perl was installed.  This if course meant that these other packages were
pulled in also.  When we break the Requires on the other packages, we
could add them to comps.xml alongside perl-devel.  This way the default
install would be 'all perl core modules', but one could easily remove
the devel-related bits either at kickstart time (-<packagename> in the
%packages section) or post-install.

What do you think about this?

Ralf?  Others?

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

[Marius Feraru]

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Hash: SHA1

Robin Norwood wrote:
>  When we break the Requires on the other packages, we could add them
> to
>  comps.xml alongside perl-devel.  This way the default install would be
>  'all perl core modules', but one could easily remove the devel-related
>  bits either at kickstart time (-<packagename> in the %packages section)
>  or post-install. 
"Default" ("base") install is already super-hyper-bloated. I'd
avoid
cluttering it even more.

OTOH, you could go "classic", in a similar way like, for instance, in order
to be able to build a gtk2 dependent app you need (among others) the
"gtk-devel" package.

So, you could alleviate this by adding (artificial) dependencies to the
"perl-devel" package in order to bring up *all* "core Perl" packages.

For the current split status, this should feel quite ok, as all those
packages have a "developerish" nature:

%package devel
...
Requires: perl(CPAN)
Requires: perl(ExtUtils::Embed)
Requires: perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)
Requires: perl(Test::Harness)
Requires: perl(Test::Simple)

'HTH
- --
Marius Feraru
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[Robin Norwood]

Marius Feraru <altblue(a)n0i.net&gt; writes:

>  Robin Norwood wrote:
> > When we break the Requires on the other packages, we could add them to
> > comps.xml alongside perl-devel.  This way the default install would be
> > 'all perl core modules', but one could easily remove the devel-related
> > bits either at kickstart time (-<packagename> in the %packages section)
> > or post-install.
>
>  "Default" ("base") install is already super-hyper-bloated. I'd
> avoid
>  cluttering it even more. 
Well, this isn't adding anything - we simply wouldn't be removing things
that, as Jose points out, are considered part of the core perl
distribution, and many people would be upset to find missing.

>  OTOH, you could go "classic", in a similar way like, for
> instance, in order
>  to be able to build a gtk2 dependent app you need (among others) the
>  "gtk-devel" package.
>
>  So, you could alleviate this by adding (artificial) dependencies to the
>  "perl-devel" package in order to bring up *all* "core Perl"
> packages.
>
>  For the current split status, this should feel quite ok, as all those
>  packages have a "developerish" nature:
>
>  %package devel
>  ...
>  Requires: perl(CPAN)
>  Requires: perl(ExtUtils::Embed)
>  Requires: perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)
>  Requires: perl(Test::Harness)
>  Requires: perl(Test::Simple) 
This is exactly what we're doing now (for f7), but I'd rather not have
artificial dependencies.

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2007-06-04 at 10:42 -0400, Robin Norwood wrote:
>  Jose Pedro Oliveira <jpo(a)di.uminho.pt&gt; writes:
>  
>  > Robin Norwood wrote:
>  >> Hi,
>  >> 
>  >> This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
>  >> the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
>  >> Comments?
>  >
>  > If that breaks the assumption that all perl core modules are installed
>  > by default, I am against (and you already know the reasons).
>  
>  Well, how about a compromise - for F7, we added perl-devel to the
>  package groups in comps.xml so that it was installed by default whenever
>  perl was installed.  This if course meant that these other packages were
>  pulled in also.  When we break the Requires on the other packages, we
>  could add them to comps.xml alongside perl-devel.  This way the default
>  install would be 'all perl core modules', but one could easily remove
>  the devel-related bits either at kickstart time (-<packagename> in the
>  %packages section) or post-install.
>  
>  What do you think about this?
>  
>  Ralf?  Others? 
Well, I seem to be stumbling from one pit-fall into the next.

To me, comps.xml is completely meaningless, because it is not of any
relevance to rpm. I.e. if some people think, it's helpful to them, so be
it.

Wrt. José's point: In a nutshell he says, "he expects a monolytic perl
and doesn't want to change his habits" - At this point, any discussion
is moot.

IMO, it would be best to add a meta-package "e.g. perl-devel" which
would pull in all split out modules.

Ralf

[Robin Norwood]

Robin Norwood <rnorwood(a)redhat.com&gt; writes:

>  Hi,
>
>  This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
>  the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
>  Comments?
>
>  (Ok, actually the patch is already applied, but I haven't built anything
>  yet.) 
Sorry for the delay, but here's an update:

I'm asking Warren Togami to add the 'split out' perl modules to
comps.xml so that these modules are installed by default whenver perl
is.  This (I hope, let me know if I'm wrong) addressess Jose's concern
that the modules will be missing in most fedora installs and be very
annoying to users, but still allows them to be removed easily if you
don't want them.  Does this work for everyone?

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

[Paul Howarth]

On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 13:59 -0400, Robin Norwood wrote:
>  Robin Norwood <rnorwood(a)redhat.com&gt; writes:
>  
>  > Hi,
>  >
>  > This patch will remove the Requires that were placed on perl-devel at
>  > the end of the f7 cycle.  It is proposed for the 'devel' branch (f8).
>  > Comments?
>  >
>  > (Ok, actually the patch is already applied, but I haven't built anything
>  > yet.)
>  
>  Sorry for the delay, but here's an update:
>  
>  I'm asking Warren Togami to add the 'split out' perl modules to
>  comps.xml so that these modules are installed by default whenver perl
>  is.  This (I hope, let me know if I'm wrong) addressess Jose's concern
>  that the modules will be missing in most fedora installs and be very
>  annoying to users, but still allows them to be removed easily if you
>  don't want them.  Does this work for everyone? 
Sounds good to me.

Paul.