* Just to show that this actually does happen, this is from my pacman.log:
The following official packages can be removed since the modules are now included in the standard perl library: perl-archive-tar perl-compress-raw-zlib perl-compress-zlib perl-extutils-cbuilder perl-io-compress-base perl-io-compress-zlib perl-io-zlib perl-module-pluggable perl-pod-escapes perl-pod-simple perl-module-build perl-version
These community packages are also included in the standard perl library: perl-archive-extract perl-cpanplus perl-digest-sha perl-file-fetch perl-extutils-parsexs perl-ipc-cmd perl-locale-maketext-simple perl-log-message perl-log-message-simple perl-module-corelist perl-module-load perl-module-load-conditional perl-module-loaded perl-module-pluggable perl-object-accessor perl-params-check perl-term-ui perl-time-piece
As you can see, things do change and having explicit dependencies will only prevent breakage.
I'm +1, but don't feel very strongly about this. I see that it's more complex than what we have now, but I think the world of perl dependencies is pretty complex, and the existing system isn't great at handling either. Modeling it in this more complete way and mirroring the upstream model seems like a good long-term choice in terms of reducing work for packagers. - P