From:	Gabor Szabo	Date:	Mon Jan 10 01:44:31 2005
Subject:	Re: mini-maxi dists

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Jim Cromie wrote:

> 2b. standardperl would use the CPAN version of the dual-life modules.
> the objective here would be to include CPAN.pm or CPANPLUS.pm,
> and to include either a repository tree (with all the authors/?/??/* 
> intermediate directories) which contains the current-coredist tarballs,
> or (simpler) a single directory with all those dual-life packages in their 
> tarball form.

OK, can someone please explain what is the story with the dual-life 
modules ? As I understand these have both CPAN and perl-x.x.x versions.
What is the difference ? What is the process that happens today when
the autor updates his CPAN version ? What if the porters change something
in the module ?
Which modules are dual-life ?


In this maxiPerl thing I started I take a standard perl,
unzip it, create a subdir called CPAN (clever name, eg ? :)
and copy the unzipped versions of the tarballs of the modules.
moving to at authors/?/??/* structure might make sense. I put it on
the think about list.


>
> 2a. (NB - this happens before 2b above, but is easier to clarify with above 
> previously stated)
>
> bareperl-overlay.tgz would be the modules that are not yet dual-lifed (sic). 
> Id expect it to be ext/* and lib/* only, and only part of them.  One would 
> expect bareperl to shrink, as more core-dist modules are dual-lifed.
>
> 2c. now all the maxi-varieties are simple to package, essentially
> repeating 2b with different lists.  They differ by being separable
> from the source tree of standard-perl.

I see you are on the same hook. ;)

>
> Obviously the same mechanism should support both in-tree and out-tree 
> bundles. out-of-tree is essential so that several maxi-dists can package
> the same module.  We dont want everyone squabbling about where DBI belongs. 
> Certainly some common subsets are apparent, or will emerge.

What do you mean by in-tree and out-tree ?



> The re-packaging of tarballs within tarballs looks a bit silly,
> but it has an important function; it means that packages on CPAN
> are EXACTLY whats in a maxi-dist, which should lower the barrier
> to banks/etc taking them piecemeal; theyre already in an 'approved'
> package, with verifiably identical MD5 checksums.

I am not sure if that's important as the whole maxiPerl package
will have its own checksum and it need to be trusted.

But if the package looks like this

./bareperl-x.x.x
./CPAN/authors/?/??/*
./CPAN/installer_script

Then we also keep the exact same perl distros as were created by the
pumking with its original checksum.


>
>
> 3. Phalanx, CPANTS
>
> Phalanx-100 sure looks like a strong candidate for one of the maxi-dists.
>
> Devel-Cover affords some opportunity to put numbers on quality,
> leading to possibility of q50, q60 grades on maxi-dists.
> Forex, a maxi-web-q90-dist would have all web-related distributions
> that pass a coverage threshold.
> Yes, its putting too much faith in numbers, but at least thats clear from 
> the arbitrary q-factor in dist-name.
>
> CPANTS is probably worth a mention - there, check that off.

I don't think we can use Coverage as indicator, CPANTS might
have better chances as it will, at some point, weight in
lots of various factors, maybe including the Coverage report.

> 4. somewhere along the line, these banks gotta just suck up
> the fact that they could pay IBM to bless some subset of CPAN.
> Id imagine that IBM would outsource some of it to authors and
> such.

Amen


Gabor