Bug#581268: libdata-visitor-perl: move away from libdata-alias-perl

[Niko Tyni]

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 10:49:54AM +0300, Niko Tyni wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 09:57:30PM +0300, Niko Tyni wrote:

> > B: remove libdata-alias-perl from the archive: either
> >   B1. remove the libdata-visitor-perl dependency on libdata-alias-perl
> >     and hope that no libdata-visitor-perl reverse dependencies need
> >     the removed functionality

It turns out that Data::Alias is only needed for currently undocumented 
functionality, enabled with the 'weaken' attribute of Data::Visitor objects.

Therefore I think this solution is acceptable and even preferred.

I've glanced through the six reverse dependencies of libdata-visitor-perl,
and I don't see any indication that the undocumented weak reference
support in Data::Visitor is needed.

> >   B2. split Data::Alias::deref() out into a new package and make
> >     libdata-visitor-perl use that.

As a proof of concept, I've put together a Data-Visitor-Crippled
distribution, available at

 http://people.debian.org/~ntyni/perl/Data-Alias-Crippled-1.0701.tar.gz 

but I'm not really enthusiastic about taking this path any further.

I propose we demote libdata-alias-perl to Recommends: or even
Suggests: for now. I very much doubt anything is going to break.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org