[aur-general] Standardized CPAN Package Versions

[Kaiting Chen]

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 5:16 PM, Xyne <xyne at archlinux.ca> wrote:

> I have CC'd this to aur-general as this concerns all CPAN packagers on
> Arch.
>
> CPAN package versions are a mess on Arch Linux. It seems that many if not
> most
> CPAN packagers on Arch are unaware of how CPAN deals with versions and thus
> they do not correctly translate the CPAN version. Most of the time a naive
> translation is used instead, and this prevents Pacman from working
> correctly.
>
> To give an example, CPAN considers "1.15" to be a later version than
> "1.23.0",
> whereas Pacman will consider the latter version the newer version. This is
> because "1.15" is short for "1.150" on CPAN, whereas "1.23.0" is short for
> "1.023.0". This can be confirmed using the "version" module[1].
>
> I have written a simple Perl script[2] that addresses this issue.* It
> accepts
> CPAN versions as command-line arguments and prints out standardized Pacman
> package versions. The package versions enable Pacman to correctly compare
> CPAN
> packages, e.g. when resolving minimal dependencies.
>
> I propose that the script be packaged and made an official tool for Perl
> package developers.** It should also be included on the Perl Package
> Guidelines
> wiki page[3].
>
> I hope that this will be seriously considered as it addresses a real issue.
> Tools that generate CPAN packages for Pacman (e.g. Bauerbill) cannot work
> properly when there is no consistency in how Arch packages are versioned.
>
> Please note as well that this is completely separate from my previous (and
> continued) contention regarding the "provides" array of CPAN packages.
>

I hate to ask but if it's to be official, do you have any unit tests?
--Kaiting.

-- 
Kiwis and Limes: http://kaitocracy.blogspot.com/