Worthless updates

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 03/03/2010 04:24 AM, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Ralf Corsepius<rc040203 at freenet.de>  said:
>> On 03/03/2010 02:29 AM, Jesse Keating wrote:
>>> What possible benefit does the user get from this?
>> Keeping the rpms in sync with CPAN.
>
> What is the benefit to the user in keeping the RPMS in sync with CPAN?

Cpan is being used to keep a perl-installation "current". Running it on 
Fedora (or other system which come with a vendor supplied perl), 
replaces all "non-current" perl-modules with those which are marked 
"current" in CPAN.

I.e. to keep the difference between CPAN and a "vendor supplied" perl 
minimal, it's advisable to keep the "vendor supplied" perl in sync with 
CPAN.

Or to put it differently: To keep a vendor supplied perl usable for perl 
developers, it's advisable to keep vendor-supplied "perl-modules" as 
close as possible to CPAN - This had been the strategy in Fedora ever 
since Fedora is around.

Or differently: If we don't keep perl-modules in Fedora's perl "CPAN 
current", we sooner or later will not be able to add other perl-modules 
to Fedora or to upgrade other perl-modules, which e.g. carry 
hard-dependencies to these "not upgraded modules" to Fedora

Or yet differently: CPAN and rpm are colliding packaging/installation 
systems.

Finally: Keeping perl-modules in Fedora in sync helps users from 
"killing" their "vender-supplied" perl installation, by mixing it up 
with CPAN - Issues resulting from such kind of mixtures very commonly 
are the cause of issues perl-users are reporting against Fedora's "perl".

> Nothing of consequence (at least according to the source changelog)
> changed with respect to perl in F11.
Simply wait for a perl-module to BR: perl(xxx) > "version in Fedora"

>> If you'd use perl you'd know.
>
> I use perl and have for years; I don't update every module every time
> there's a new update on CPAN;
c.f. above.

> I update when there's a bugfix that
> affects my platform (a bugfix that only affects perl 5.11 users doesn't
> affect F11 users) or when there's a new feature I need.
Wait until you will want to address a "serious/critical" bugfix to a 
perl-module which carries a dependency on a perl-module you haven't kept 
in sync with CPAN => You'd have to resort to either "fastestly" upgrade 
a series of perl-modules or resort to other solutions (E.g. to 
deliberately remove versioned dependencies from rpm and try to get away 
without them.)

Ralf