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List:       fedora-devel-list
Subject:    Re: Modularity and the system-upgrade path
From:       Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler () chello ! at>
Date:       2019-11-16 2:25:10
Message-ID: qqnmm8$3vdv$1 () blaine ! gmane ! org
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Petr Pisar wrote:
> With your proposal Bugzilla packager would have to package Bugzilla
> twice: as a normal package for default Perl 5.26 and as a module for Perl
> 5.30. Then a user would have hard time to select the right combinations of
> Perl and Bugzilla. It would double fork work pacakgers and and make
> the system more dificult for users.

The Bugzilla rebuild for the non-default Perl actually belongs IN the Perl 
module. Otherwise, enabling the non-default stream for the Perl module will 
break the user's Bugzilla and force them to manually enable the 
corresponding non-default stream for the Bugzilla module. Plus, since there 
are many Perl applications, having a module for each of them (each tracking 
Perl's module streams) just does not scale.

But what this example really shows is that it is a horrible idea to have a 
Perl module to begin with. The non-default Perl needs to be packaged as a 
parallel-installable compatibility package (or as an SCL, but that opens its 
own can of worms) instead. You cannot just replace a language interpreter 
(especially not one as widely used as Perl) with a different version. (As 
you pointed out yourself, that breaks even fedpkg. Even though fedpkg itself 
is not even written in Perl!) The parallel-installable approach is also the 
only reasonable way to support applications that require a non-default 
version of Perl, without conflicting with the rest of the distribution.

        Kevin Kofler
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