Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 10:13:42 +0200 From: Frederic Culot <culot@FreeBSD.org> To: perl@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: With or without .packlist? Message-ID: <20131010081342.GC26820@culot.org> In-Reply-To: <20131010061045.GP16964@ithaqua.etoilebsd.net> References: <20131010061045.GP16964@ithaqua.etoilebsd.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi, > Hi guys, > > With the staging support, we can properly decide what we do pack or not inside > the packages, the question now is do we keep the .packlist (in that case they > need to be fixed because they are full of stage path :)) or should we just drop > those files and no package them at all. > > It seems to me that most of the other operating systems are not packaging. > > I have no clue what what those .packlist files are useful for, so I do have no > opinion, would be nice to get a perl@ claim on this soon, as we either need to > fix them or nuke them. > > btw: sunpoet has a PR I'm sitting one because of that: > http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/182806 > > regards, > Bapt >From my own experience (which is far from extensive in this matter), the .packlist files are used for two different purposes. The first one is related to the management of modules via ExtUtils::* utilities (ExtUtils::Installed and ExtUtils::Packlist are the ones I am aware of), such as inventory management of modules. The second one is related to the building of standalone package, via modules such as App::FatPacker. One may use those to bundle a script and all its dependencies into a single standalone package, and to do so the .packlist files are relied upon. For the first use, I believe the .packlist files can safely be removed, because FreeBSD already provides all the necessary tools to perform such inventory management. But for the second use I am not sure... If we are to remove .packlist files we may end up with users complaining they could not bundle their scripts anymore (I already heard such complains from gentoo users for instance). But there might by other ways to package modules and dependencies which do not require .packlist files to be present. >From my own perspective, I believe the benefits we would get from removing those .packlist files (mainly easier integration with staging) exceeds the drawbacks, and I would agree to drop them. Cheers, Frederic
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20131010081342.GC26820>