[SLpm] Re: what next? (with a Debian/Perl question)

[Spencer Christensen]

Quoting Ryan <ryan at ryansimpkins.com>:

> Well, I take it I would be the only one there if I went. Time to think
> of 
> another idea. Lunch sounds cool. Can someone suggest a time and place?

Hires on 400 South and 700 East is always good.  Maybe Tues the 13th or Wed the 
14th?  Noon.  Any one else insterested in coming?
 
> I also have a question. I have a Debian 2.1 (potato) box with Perl 5.6.1
> that I installed via CPAN. It took forever to get the installation just 
> right with all my favorite  modules in place. Of course the latest
> version 
> of Debian has come out 2.2 (woody) that includes Perl 5.6.1. My question
> is 
> - what will happen to my custom installation of 5.6.1 if I upgrade these
> boxes using apt-get or dselect? It seems to me that so many .deb
> packages 
> rely on Perl that I can't simply choose to not install the Perl packages
> without getting a lot of dependency warnings. Unfortunately I don't have
> a 
> test box to try this out on, only 3 production servers. Has anyone else
> out 
> there done this? 

Mmmm, Unfortunately when installing Debian packages, it doesn't look to see what 
Perl modules have been installed from CPAN or otherwise (as far as I know).  It 
only checks the database of installed deb packages (this is the same behavior 
for all packaging systems that I'm aware of).  So, basically, if there is a 
dependency on a perl module, then it will need to install the appropriate dep 
package (basically re-installing the perl module if you installed it by hand).
But this shouldn't be much of a problem at all.

I recommend sticking with the deb packages for all your core functionality and 
most of your perl modules as well.  That way any other packages that might have 
a perl dependency will work.  But for modules that can't be found with dselect, 
use CPAN.  I used to have a debian box and this is how I did it and never had 
any problems.

> Also, what experience have you all had with installing 
> 5.8.0? Did things go smooth, or were there hitches?
> 
> -Ryan

Haven't tried 5.8.0 yet.

-spencer christensen
spencer at mecworks.com
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