Packaging Perl modules
for Debian

Jozef

Why Debian?

• Test::More 'no_plan'; Test::Exception;
• isa_ok(Debian, 'Linux');
• ok(Debian->production);
• is(Debian, 'stable') or die;
• is_deeply(Debian->perl, [ 'friendly' ]);
• can_ok(Debian, qw{ customize });
• ok(Debian->maintenace < $AFFORDABLE);
• lives_ok(sub { Debian->without_maintenance } );

Lots of other choices

Better have one tux in your hand then...

in a crazy dream we can start to think of alternatives...

the butterfly looks so nice!

vs

Enough of joking

• Debian is "famous" for stability
• something vs something
• Debian is "famous" for old versions
• 2-3y release cycle - no version upgrades
• of course security upgrades (avail. 1y after next stable)
• very powerful (and usable) packaging
• apt-cache search perl
  | grep -E '^lib([a-z0-9]+-)+perl '
  | wc -l # = 1103

who takes care?

• Currently, the project includes more than a thousand developers. (Wikipedia)

COIN::Curator installation

7min?, 10min?, or? let's see...

• Curator Engine Debian install wiki
• $ apt-get install libcoin-curator-perl
• 0 upgraded, 165 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
• Need to get 153MB of archives.
• After unpacking 347MB of additional disk space will be used.
• 49 custom made packages

packaging of Pod::Spell

• apt-get install dh-make-perl dpkg-dev debhelper
• dh-make-perl --cpan Pod::Spell
• cd Pod-Spell-*
• debuild
• cd ..
• ls -la
• # et voilà
• # dirty but quick

dh-make-perl not perfect

• sometimes you need to resolve dependencies your self (Module::Install)
• if not packaged (or old versions) package them...
• need to set build dependencies
• fill changelog (?)
• sometimes fix version of the dependency
  as some module authors have desynchronized - higher versions in sub files
• debs without own custom repository is a pain
• apt-file can not find files of dependencies that are not in repository
  => dh-make-perl fails to resolve dependencies automatically

why own repository?

• easy installation
• let's have more!
• stable && testing && unstable
• related to me/my company
• developers - unstable
• staging - testing
• production - stable

own debian repository

• "just" a folder with some structure
  any web server can host it (even IIS! ;)
• folder served by HTTP and/or FTP
• apt-cache show reprepo
• Setting up your own APT repository with upload support
• reprepro include unstable libfilesys-diskusage-perl_0.04-1_i386.changes

benefits of packaging

• standard/homogenous naming - Module::Build => libmodule-build-perl
• synchronized module versions update (apt-get upgrade)
• easy revert back if something goes wrong
  apt-get install libdbi-perl=1.53-1etch1
• apt-show-versions - compare two systems
• apt-file search - where is this file coming from?
• dpkg-reconfigure - ask interactive questions
• dpkg-divert - ability to change only minimum
• every package has a maintainer - know who to bother

bug report

• module versions (combination) in standard distribution (etch, lenny)
  are tested.
• if security bug found is it should be reported and will be fixed
• even in testing (lenny) the modules should work fine.
  are already "tested" coming from unstable
• if not sudo apt-get install reportbug
• reportbug /bin/bash || reportbug bash

useful "package" commands

• apt-cache (search|show)
• apt-get (install|remove|source|build-dep)
• apt-show-versions
• apt-file (update|search)
• dpkg-reconfigure

And that's it...

Questions?