Bug#530639: dh-make-perl: watch file should ignore development releases

[Brian Cassidy]

Package: dh-make-perl
Version: 0.55
Severity: normal


The watch file generated by dh-make-perl seems to allow development versions
(i.e. _XX in the version string).

I believe the default behavior should ignore these releases for a few reasons:

1) They are not indexed by PAUSE; development versions do not affect the CPAN
indices used by CPAN/CPANPLUS clients. To that effect, attempting to install a
module via the standard "cpan Foo::Bar" idiom will never hit a development release.

2) Development versions are generally not meant for mass distribution. They are
sent to CPAN as "Release Candidates" or even "preview" releases. They often
include untested code, and sometimes code which can break backwards compatibility.

For the reasons mentioned about these releases do not make good candidates for
debian packaging and should be ignored by the watch file.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages dh-make-perl depends on:
ii  debhelper                     7.2.8      helper programs for debian/rules
ii  dpkg-dev                      1.14.26    Debian package development tools
ii  fakeroot                      1.12.2     Gives a fake root environment
ii  libapt-pkg-perl               0.1.23     Perl interface to libapt-pkg
ii  libclass-accessor-perl        0.33-1     Automated accessor generator
ii  libemail-date-format-perl     1.002-1    Module to generate RFC-2822-valid 
ii  libmodule-corelist-perl       2.17-1     what modules shipped with versions
ii  libmodule-depends-perl        0.14-3     identify the dependencies of a dis
ii  libtie-ixhash-perl            1.21-2     ordered associative arrays for Per
ii  libwww-mechanize-perl         1.54-2     module to automate interaction wit
ii  libyaml-perl                  0.68-1     YAML Ain't Markup Language (tm)
ii  make                          3.81-5     The GNU version of the "make" util
ii  perl                          5.10.0-22  Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  perl-modules [libmodule-corel 5.10.0-22  Core Perl modules

Versions of packages dh-make-perl recommends:
ii  apt-file                      2.2.2      search for files within Debian pac
ii  perl-modules [libmodule-build 5.10.0-22  Core Perl modules

dh-make-perl suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information