Posted by simonw on Thu 27 Oct 2005 at 13:52
We install a few Perl modules on production servers for email, websites, that sort of thing, and I'm building a new server, but also I write some code in my spare time that depends on some less mainstream bits of Perl (Chess::PGN::Parse amongst others).
I was somewhat surprised to find that "Tie::RDBM" isn't obviously packaged (no libtie-rdbm-perl package), since this is the official Debian name for Perl modules according to the Perl Policy Guide.
Is there a better search than "apt-cache search libtie perl"? As I assume it could have been packaged in "libtie-perl" and state it provides "Tie::RDBM".
Now those nice folks at CPAN (well a chap(?) called Jos) have been packaging CPAN for Debian, but this seems aimed at those who like bleeding edge packages.
I'm running Debian Stable, guess what, I don't want bleeding edge, I want safe, secure, boring, at least on the live servers. But I guess CPAN is what it is, and it is probably better that I get notified when CPAN packages I use have been updated, even if I choose not to install them for a few days.
Besides Jos doesn't package Tie::RDBM either as far as I can tell.
Based on the comments to the previous article I can do something like;
dh-make-perl --build --notest --cpan Tie::RDBM
And make a package in one command (never mind the email address).
But doing so gives me the worst of both worlds, no auto-update of the software, some loss of CPAN dependency information. I can see the advantage if I had a lot of servers to maintain (I have about 6 with this particular configuration, although some of them aren't anything to do with my employer).
Obvious solution is to become a maintainer of the packages I need, but work with others to avoid duplication of effort.
I can see CPAN will never quite make it smoothly into Debian because differences in release policy, but it looks like the basics have been fully automated, and it just needs someone to provide a server, some webspace, and some CPU time to package stuff? I figure any idle PC on a broadband connection could do the packaging easily enough, with minimal tender loving care.
Is this a fair reflection of how things stand?
The Demon CPAN mirror is still messed up AFAICT.
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