Re: Introduction

Hi,

Gregor Herrmann writes:
> On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 13:05:59 +0100, Andreas Vögele wrote:
>> my Name is Andreas Vögele. I'm VOEGELAS on CPAN and voegelas on Salsa.
>> [...]
>> I'd like to package my Perl module IP::Geolocation::MMDB and its
>> prerequisite Alien::libmaxminddb.
> [...] As a technical side note, in Debian we often go ahead without
> packaging Alien::libfoo because we know that we have libfoo and we
> can use libfoo-dev at buildtime (and we don't want to try and download
> something from the 'net anyway). Patching out the Alien::* stuff from
> Makefile.PL or Build.PL and setting LIB and INC either manually or
> with the help of ExtUtils::PkgConfig is often trivial. [0]

That's really good advice. I've released a new version of 
IP::Geolocation::MMDB that doesn't require patching. If 
Alien::libmaxminddb isn't available, pkgconf is used.
>> Right now, I'm reading documents from https://perl-team.pages.debian.net/,
>> but I'm not sure where to begin.  Should I create an RFP and wait for
>> approval or rejection? Should I ask to become a member of the Debian Perl
>> Group?
> Depends on your aim:
> - If you "just" want to get IP::Geolocation::MMDB into Debian,
>    packaged by someone else than an RFP (Request for Packaging (by
>    others)) bug is technically correct, but just asking here has the
>    same effect :)

Can you package IP::Geolocation::MMDB? That would be great. There are 
updated "debian" files at 
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:voegelas/perl-IP-Geolocation-MMDB 
that depend on pkgconf and libmaxminddb-dev instead of 
libalien-libmaxminddb-perl. The control file there suggests the packages 
dbip-asn-lite and dbip-country-lite, which aren't provided by Debian.

> - If you want to package it yourself and maintain it in the future,
>    you should file an ITP bug (Intent to Package) and we
>    can add you to the team on salsa, where you can push a repo with
>    the source package, which one of us will review and eventually
>    upload.
>   
>> I'm familiar with Perl, C and packaging and could work on packages with bugs
>> or maybe lintian.
> More collaborators on bugs in all our packages are always welcome!

I could package IP::Geolocation::MMDB myself, but I just realized that 
trixie will be frozen soon. As far as I can see, I can start to work on 
bugs without me immediately becoming a team member. On the other hand, 
it has become increasingly difficult to get patches applied upstream as 
some people have either retired or no longer use Perl. Do you work with 
pull requests in GitLab on Salsa?

Kind regards,
Andreas