[oi-dev] perl module update questions

[Tim Mooney]

All-

I'm working my way through rebuilding hipster's perl modules for perl
5.30.1 and I have a couple questions.

1) I've found one or two cases like

   oi-userland/components/perl/xml-simple/xml-simple-PERLVER.p5m

where the .p5m file contains an explicit dependency upon the
non-perl-specific metapackage:

 	depend fmri=library/perl-5/xml-parser type=require

Because of that depend, if I were to

     pfexec pkg install library/perl-5/xml-parser-530

I would get both library/perl-5/xml-parser-530 and
library/perl-5/xml-parser.

Should all of the perl-version-specific packages have this dependency
relation?  If not, what criteria do I use to determine whether that
should be added to the .p5m file or not?


2) If I publish e.g. xml-parser, with my runtime/perl-530 installed,
there are 4 xml-parser packages generated:

 	library/perl-5/xml-parser                         2.44-2020.0.0.1
 	library/perl-5/xml-parser-522                     2.44-2020.0.0.1
 	library/perl-5/xml-parser-524                     2.44-2020.0.0.1
 	library/perl-5/xml-parser-530                     2.44-2020.0.0.1

What's the correct terminology for the first package
(library/perl-5/xml-parser)?  Is it a mediator?


3) many of the perl modules currently have a 'history' file.  This seems
to trigger some additional behavior from the publish target, apparently
via make-rules/history.mk.  In these cases, publish is generating an
additional versioned package and adding it to my repo.  The package
doesn't have any file contents, though, and it's flagged as "obsolete".

What's the purpose of all of that?

Is there anything I should be doing related to 'history' if I add new
perl modules or update existing ones?

I would like to follow the proper procedure for any modules I add or
update, but at least for 'history', I'm not sure what that is.  It doesn't
seem to be covered in the IPS dev guide, that I can find.

Thanks!

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney at ndsu.edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure /
Division of Information Technology    /                701-231-1076 (Voice)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164