[Pkg-openssl-devel] Bug#860254: Bug#860254:

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 07:42:37AM +0000, Jonathon Delgado wrote:
> Every system comes with perl-base. The full perl package add a many megabytes of libraries which is a problem for space-constrained systems.
> 
> Isn't the whole point of perl-base that packages won't have to depend on perl just to run a few scripts?

>From the perl policy document:
| Programs which require core modules from the perl package must
| specify a dependency on that package.
| 
| Programs which contain explicit require version or use version
| statements must specify a dependency on perl or perl-base with the
| minimum required version, or more simply the current version.
| 
| As with modules, packages using debhelper may use dh_perl(1) to
| automatically generate dependences (see Automating Perl
| Dependencies, Section 4.4.3). 

And:
| 4.4.2 Binary and Other Architecture Dependent Modules
|
| Binary modules must specify a dependency on either perl or
| perl-base with a minimum version of the perl package used to build
| the module. Additionally, all binary modules (regardless of their
| installation directory) and any other modules installed into
| $Config{vendorarch} must depend on the expansion of
| perlapi-$Config{debian_abi} using the Config module. If
| $Config{debian_abi} is empty or not set, $Config{version} must be
| used.
|
| 4.4.3 Automating Perl Dependencies
|
| Rather than hard-coding the dependencies into the control file,
| using a substitution such as ${perl:Depends} is suggested. This
| allows the dependencies to be determined at build time and written
| to the substvars file in the form perl:Depends=deps.[9]
| 
| Packages built with debhelper may use dh_perl(1) to generate this
| substitution automatically. This additionally requires a versioned
| Build-Depends (or Build-Depends-Indep) on debhelper (>= 3.0.18). 


And in dh_perl:
| -d  In some specific cases you may want to depend on
|     perl-base rather than the full perl package. If so, you can pass
|     the -d option to make dh_perl generate a dependency on the
|     correct base package. This is only necessary for some
|     packages that are included in the base system.
|
|     Note that this flag may cause no dependency on
|     perl-base to be generated at all. perl-base is Essential, so its
|     dependency can be left out, unless a versioned dependency is
|     needed.


Kurt