Subject: Bug#4238: mirror requires perl

From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 15:50:29 -0400

Package: mirror
Version: 2.8-6

The control file for mirror should be changed to show that it requires
the installation of the full Perl package, not just the small package
included in the base system (what's missing is a timezone.pl file).

Alternatively, the perl package in the base system needs to have the
timezone.pl file added to it.

Susan Kleinmann

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 24 Aug 96 14:16 EDT

Susan> Package: mirror 
  Susan> Version: 2.8-6
  Susan> 
  Susan> The control file for mirror should be changed to show that it
  Susan> requires the installation of the full Perl package, not just the
  Susan> small package included in the base system (what's missing is a
  Susan> timezone.pl file).
  Susan> 
  Susan> Alternatively, the perl package in the base system needs to have the
  Susan> timezone.pl file added to it.

Thanks for pointing this out.  But what shall I do?

On one hand, 16 packages directly depend on perl.[1] I could add a Depends.

On the other hand, we seem to have (had ?) a policy of relying on (at least a
rudimentary) perl in the base system --- but I cannot find anything on that
in the programmers and policy manuals of dpkg-1.3.8. So should timezone.pl
move into base? Comments? Ian, Bruce?

[1] edd@miles:~> zgrep "^depends.*perl" /mirror/debian/rex/binary-i386/Packages.gz | wc -l
     16     

--
Dirk Eddelb"uttel                             http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd

---

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 96 14:18 BST

Dirk Eddelbuettel writes ("Bug#4238: mirror requires perl"):
...
> move into base? Comments? Ian, Bruce?

I propose the following policy, which is roughly what we have at the
moment:

A basic version of Perl is shipped with the base system.  This should
be a separate package, say `perlbase'.  If you only need this you
don't need a dependency.

If you need extra modules, &c, you must declare a dependency on
`perl'.

Ian.