Perl Packages [was: Re: GNOME Bugzilla Upgrade: Test Upgrade On Friday?]

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

(Note: there is a actual proposal for a change in our package
installation policy below, so read down for that even if you aren't that
interested in the details of what Perl packages Bugzilla use)

On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 16:22 -0700, Max Kanat-Alexander wrote:
> Owen Taylor wrote:
> >  RHEL Packages
> >  EPEL Packages
> 
> 	I usually prioritize EPEL higher on my machines, also (as I mentioned 
> in my last email) but they're just not quite as active with updates as 
> rpmforge is, it seems. And they don't have as many of the Perl modules 
> available.

EPEL has policy of not replacing the core EL packages, so it shouldn't
matter about priorities between them.

It doesn't look like yum-[plugin-]priorities is in RHEL 5 or EPEL 5.
Since I don't think we need any complex priority scheme, yum-protectbase
is probably sufficient.

I've done some testing and verified that it does work and can be used to
protect the RHN package set and EPEL against upgrades to rpmforge
packages.

> >  Local rebuilds of current Fedora packages
> >  Locally builds of custom packages or packages from other sources
> 
> 	The problem with building the packages locally is that you won't get 
> updates. Which might be okay, and might not be.

Updates are good if there are important security updates.

Updates are bad if some major component gets up-versioned, compat is
  broken and you are scrambling to get your system working again.

Always a trade-off :-)

> > Are version requirements for the dependencies available somewhere?
> 
> http://www.bugzilla.org/releases/3.4/release-notes.html#v34_req_modules
> 
> > Parse::StackTrace deps
> > ======================
> 
> 	It needs MooseX::AttributeHelpers and Moose.

OK, thanks. More complete chart of dependencies appended to this mail. A
problem that arises is that there are a set of packages that are
available in EPEL where newer versions are needed from RPMForge. The
obvious cases are:

 perl-Email-MIME-Modifier (1.441 vs. 1.442)
 perl-Email-MIME (1.859 vs. 1.861)
 perl-Template-Toolkit (2.18 vs. 2.22)
 perl-Moose (0.51 vs. 0.56)

What might make sense is to make RPMForge our canonical repo for perl,
and add to epel.repo:

 exclude=perl-*

I don't think it makes sense to do things differently across the
different servers, so what I'm thinking of is:

 Base RHEL repository: protected
 EPEL: protected, exclude=perl-*
 RPMForge: not protected, include=perl-*

(So, perl packages actually in RHEL are still protected and won't be
upgraded; that can be relaxed if necessary.)

One thing that we have to be careful about with this is that when label
is added to puppet, then all the custom Perl packages to it will be
upgraded to the RPMForge versions. AFAIK, none of the other systems have
any significant Perl services running on them. Maybe we just hold off on
puppet-managing label until we have bugzilla migrated over.

- Owen


===============================

Required, OK
============
perl-DateTime                       1:0.41-1.el5 (epel)       0.28
perl-DBD-mysql                      3.0007-2.el5 (rhel)       2.9003
perl-Email-MIME-Encodings           1.313-1.el5 (epel)        1.313
perl-Email-Send                     2.185-3.el5 (epel)        2.00
perl-URI                            1.35-3 (rhel)             any

Required, OK, in release notes but not list in Max's mail
========================================================
perl-TimeDate                       2.22 - 1.16-5.el5 (rhel)  2.21

Required, not OK
================
perl-Email-MIME-Modifier            1.441-1.el5 (epel)        1.442
                                      [1.444-1.el5.rf]
perl-Email-MIME                     1.859-1.el5 (epel)        1.861
                                      [1.863-1.el5.rf]
perl-Template-Toolkit               2.18-1.el5 (epel)         2.22
                                      [2.21-1.el5.rf]
perl-Digest-SHA                     X [1:5.47-73.fc11]        any
                                      [5.47-1.el5.rf]

Optional, OK
============
perl-GD                             2.35-2.el5 (epel)         1.20
perl-XML-Twig                       3.26-1.fc6 (rhel)         any
perl-libwww-perl                    5.805-1.1.1 (rhel)        any
perl-LDAP                           1:0.33-3.fc6 (rhel)       any
ImageMagick-perl                    6.2.8.0-4.el5_1.1 (rhel)  any
perl-HTML-Parser                    3.55-1.fc6 (rhel)         3.40
perl-HTML-Scrubber                  0.08-4.el5.2 (epel)       any
perl-Email-MIME-Attachment-Stripper 1.313-3.el5 (epel)        any
perl-Email-Reply                    1.201-3.el5 (epel)        any
perl-Authen-SASL                    2.10-1.el5.1 (epel)       any
perl-SOAP-Lite                      0.710.07-2.el5 (epel)     any
mod_perl                            2.0.4-6.el5 (rhel)        1.999022

Optional, OK, in release notes, but not Max's mail
=================================================
perl-GDGraph-1.44                   1:1.44-1.el5 (epel)       any
perl-GDTextUtil                     0.86-8.el5 (epel)         any
perl-MIME-tools                     5.420-3.el5 (epel)        5.406

Optional, not OK
================
perl-Template-GD                    X [2.66-5.fc11]       any    graphical reports
                                    [2.66-1.el5.rf]
perl-Chart                          X [2.4.1-7.fc11]      1.0    New Charts, Old Charts
                                    [2.4.1-1.el5.rf]
perl-PatchReader                    X [0.9.5-6.fc11]      0.9.4  patch viewer
                                    [0.9.5-2.2.el5.rf]
perl-Daemon-Generic                 X [0.61-1.fc11]       any    mail queueing
                                    [0.61-1.el5.rf]
perl-TheSchwartz                    X [1.07-2.fc11]       any    mail queueing
                                    [1.07-1.el5.rf]
perl-Data-ObjectDriver              X [0.06-3.fc11]       ???    ??????????????????????
                                    [0.06-1.el5.rf]

Parse::StackTrace and deps
==========================
Parse::StackTrace                   X
perl-Moose                          0.51-1.el5            ???    ?????????????????????
                                    [0.87-1.el5.rf]
perl-MooseX-AttributeHelpers        X [0.19-1.fc11]       ???    ?????????????????????
                                    [0.20-1.el5.rf]