Bug#495394: Perl embedding pain

[Niko Tyni]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 01:35:50AM -0700, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-08-25 at 16:20 -0700, Niko Tyni wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 01:07:16PM -0700, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > > As libperl5.* packages currently depend on an exact version of
> > > perl-base, coinstallation of multiple library versions is impossible.
> > > Transitions are not only a pain for developers, but users must upgrade
> > > all Perl extensions and embedding applications at the same time as the
> > > perl package.
> > > 
> > > Why don't all the Perl package names include the ABI version, leaving
> > > perl as a metapackage?
> > > 
> > > With linux-tools-* packages, this is particularly problematic as the
> > > older packages will never be rebuilt for the new Perl version.  My
> > > inclination is to 'fix' this by removing Perl integration from perf.
> > > Please let us know whether it will be possible to fix this properly.

> > For my part, I'm sort of interested in leaving old libperl versions
> > installable after upgrades, but I wouldn't want to be supporting
> > /usr/bin/perl5.18 and /usr/bin/perl5.20 simultaneously or even having
> > separate source packages for different Perl versions in the archive at the
> > same time.

Hi, getting back to this old thread (and #495394, which is a similar
request): it looks like we'll be reorganizing the package setup for
Perl 5.22 so that in the future libperl5.xx and libperl5.yy will stay
coinstallable, along with the full standard library.  There are still
no provisions for keeping old builds of binary ("XS") module packages
around, but it should be possible to install those modules manually from
CPAN if needed.

New major Perl releases are made yearly in May or thereabouts, and 5.22
is currently at the release candidate phase upstream. We expect to get
it in experimental soon, and in sid this summer.  By the time stretch
is frozen I suppose we'll be at 5.24.

As jessie was released with the old setup, this won't help jessie->stretch
upgrades, but at least things are getting better now.

Greetings from the Debian Perl team sprint in sunny Barcelona,
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org