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Re: Stop turning CPAN modules into Cygwin packages
On Dec 12, 2007 10:04 AM, Jerry D. Hedden <jdhedden@cpan.org> wrote:
> Eric Blake wrote:
> > A new package, perl-Error-0.17010-1, is now available for use.
> >
> > NEWS:
> > =====
> > This is a new package, providing the Error module for perl.
>
> What is the point of making this a Cygwin package? There
> are no Cygwin specific changes, and it it can be installed
> directly from CPAN using:
> cpan -i Error
>
> This seems to be becoming a trend. So far there are 8 CPAN
> modules that have been made into Cygwin packages. Only 3
> have Cygwin specific changes that would justify them being
> made into package:
> perl-Locale-gettext
> perl-Tk
> perl-libwin32
>
> The other 5 have no Cygwin specific changes:
> perl-Error
> perl-ExtUtils-Depends
> perl-ExtUtils-PkgConfig
> perl-Module-Build
> perl-Win32-GUI
>
> This seems like a bad practice. It adds a maintenance
> burden on the Cygwin system (because the packages will need
> to be updated when the modules are updated), they needlessly
> take up storage on the Cygwin servers, and turning them into
> Cygwin packages adds no value over obtaining the modules
> directly from CPAN.
>
> Just because you can turn a CPAN module into a Cygwin
> package doesn't mean that you should unless there are Cygwin
> specific changes that need to be made. Even then, a better
> approach is to send the appropriate patches to the module's
> maintainer so that they can be integrated into the code and
> uploaded to CPAN.
>
Because when you package something using a distro's packaging system,
you can start to have other programs that depend on it install them
automatically using the package system. Also, installing from CPAN,
while very easy to do, does not keep track or even know about a
distro's package management system. So if you wanted to remove it
later, it is not easy to do, and you could easily run into problems
where you have installed one version from CPAN, then another package
requires that module, but because you installed via CPAN it doesn't
know that, and will then install an older version, overwriting your
CPAN-installed version.
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