Debian Lenny libapache2-mod-perl2 package description incorrectly lists the module name of "Apache::Registry"

[Jonathan Yu]

Hi Imran:

Thanks for the bug report.

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 6:54 AM, Imran Chaudhry
<imran.chaudhry at smoothwall.net> wrote:
> # apt-cache show libapache2-mod-perl2
>
> Description: Integration of perl with the Apache2 web server
>  mod_perl allows the use of Perl for just about anything
>  Apache-related, including <Perl> sections in the config
>  files and the famous Apache::Registry module for caching
>  compiled scripts.
>
> # perldoc  Apache::Registry
> No documentation found for "Apache::Registry".
The report has been noted, and either myself or one of the other
maintainers on pkg-perl will make the appropriate changes.
>
> It should be ModPerl::Registry, thus:
>
> # perldoc ModPerl::Registry
>
> I favour allowing both names if possible (some sort of aliasing?)
Both names would not be a good idea. First of all, the reason why
different namespaces were used in the first place is that
Apache::Registry is (to my knowledge) not compatible with
ModPerl::Registry.

If we were to alias them together, then scripts that expect to work
with Apache::Registry will instead be exposed to the ModPerl::Registry
API, which is totally different. This would cause wildly varying
behaviour and strange bugs. It's better to say "this module is not
available" rather than "this module is here, but behaves totally
differently from what you expect." People would look in the perldoc
for Apache::Registry, thinking that they are calling Apache::Registry,
when in fact they are poking at ModPerl::Registry.

As well, this would have broken compatibility with both mod_perl2 and
mod_perl1 being installed on the same machine. However this is no
longer problematic as there is no mod_perl1 package available via
Debian anymore (Apache1 was removed ages ago), and anyone installing
it would have to install it via CPAN or manually, which means that the
module would have been in 'local' and not 'site'.

What we can perhaps look into doing is providing a stub module which
would act as an alias for Apache::Registry and state that
ModPerl::Registry should be used instead. However, I'm not sure of the
real-world use of this, because every modperl2 based tutorial will
mention ModPerl::Registry and not the former.
>
>
> Regards
>
> Imran Chaudhry
> Software Engineer
>
> SmoothWall Ltd
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Thanks for the bug report and I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Jonathan