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Postings from March 2003
Currently CPAN.pm has a special logic to make sure that if a requested package is found in the core perl distribution and in another package, that another package takes the precedence if its VERSION number is the same or higher than the VERSION number of that package in the core perl distro. Now I working on a helper package for mod_perl CPAN modules (to reduce the craft in Makefile.PL) and I want it to be on CPAN, but also include it in the mod_perl 1.0 and 2.0 core (also living on CPAN). I foresee a problem with CPAN.pm, as it's going to see the same package in 3 different packages and which is going to be picked by CPAN.pm is undefined, since we have no special case logic for mod_perl-core packages. And we don't want CPAN.pm to try to install mod_perl 1.0, when I just want to fetch that single package. I suppose that this will always do the right thing if the standalone package will have a higher version, than the one in the core, but that's not a good solution, since it'll require an unnecessary update on user's behalf and it creates a lot of confusion. What should be the right approach? Perhaps, we have to introduce a new special package variable, recognized by CPAN and CPANPLUS (and search.cpan.org), to designate the MASTER package. e.g. if the master package name is ModPerl-Foo, ModPerl/Foo.pm will include: $CPAN_MASTER_PACKAGE = 'ModPerl-Foo'; notice that this is 'ModPerl-Foo' and not 'ModPerl::Foo', because it lets CPAN to make the right choice between these three packages that include ModPerl::Foo: mod_perl-1.27.tgz mod_perl-1.99_09.tgz ModPerl-Foo-0.01.tgz we want ModPerl-Foo-0.01.tgz to be picked. Once we have this logic in place, we no longer need to make a special case for the perl core, but let every package that has a dual (or a ternary) life define its master package. __________________________________________________________________ Stas Bekman JAm_pH ------> Just Another mod_perl Hacker http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org mailto:stas@stason.org http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com