Port dependencies on p5-Test-*

[Lars Balker Rasmussen]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 12:59:32PM -0800, Yen-Ming Lee wrote:
> Let me pick a vivid example, www/p5-Jifty, which is maintained by tobez at .
> Sorry, tobez@, I'm not against you, just want to make sure that you want us
> (p5-* port maintainers) to do so. I really have no problem if you want it,
> but I hope that other p5-* port maintainers will follow the same way.
> 
> p5-Jifty has 76 dependencies directly and 207 dependencies totally. Now all
> of the direct dependencies are in BUILD_DEPENDS and
> RUN_DEPENDS=BUILD_DEPENDS. It's the worst cases described by des@ in the
> first mail of this thread. The module authors just put everything in
> Makefile.PL, so you have to scan all the modules installed.
> 
> Some of the dependencies are for run, we really need them and should put
> them in PERL_DEPENDS, then bsd.perl.mk will check their versions with the
> ones in cores, and put the missing ones in BUILD_DEPENDS and RUN_DEPENDS;
> some of the dependencies are for tests only, we should put them in
> PERL_TEST_DEPENDS so only the developers with P5PORTER set will bring them
> into the check process and put them in BUILD_DEPENDS if needed. All the
> others are rescued from hell and will happily build the port without them.
> 
> Here comes the problem: please tell us how to figure out which ones should
> be in PERL_DEPENDS and which ones should be in PERL_TEST_DEPENDS.
> 
> I, a lame p5-* ports maintainer, spent more than two hours to write the
> script, scan and test again and again, and finally found that five of them
> are only needed for tests. Be careful, not the five ones starting with Test::*.
> Furthermore, only three out of the five ones are in Makefile now,
> which means we don't cover all modules needed for tests yet.
> 
> I think you must have some easier way to scan the dependencies.

There's nothing easy about it, but it's not a CATASTROPHE to put too much
in PERL_DEPENDS.  And it's quite simple:  Jifty is buggy, since it doesn't
put Test-modules in build_requires rather than requires, so do what you can
to send patches upstream - I've landed myself a Catalyst commit-bit, because
I've complained about the form of their modules too many times.

When there are a few build_requires (instead of none), the developers tend
to begin thinking about where modules are needed, and the situation will
improve over time.

As for Test-modules in Jifty - Jifty includes its own test-modules, so it
can't be fully installed without them.
-- 
Lars Balker Rasmussen                                        Consult::Perl