WARNING

This page badly needs an update. It's best not to rely on any of this information unless you're a src:perl uploader (and not even then).

Some notes/TODO relating to perl interpreter maintenance.

Rebuilding packages for a major version transition

This is done using a debomatic setup now, mostly managed via https://salsa.debian.org/perl-team/perl.debian.net

The main complication is that we need unofficial binNMUs of the perlapi-* and libperl reverse dependencies so that they can be used as build dependencies for rebuilding the rest.

The scripts at https://salsa.debian.org/perl-team/scripts/tree/master/perl-transitions are used to determine the necessary binNMUs; the order also matters because the dependencies form a chain.

Other issues

git-dpm use

Reverting a patch

git dpm checkout-patched
git log
<search for commit hash of patch to revert> - also note short log message
git rebase -i <commit hash>^
The commit in question should be listed first. Delete it.
git dpm dch

Other

Upstream support policy

http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2011-04/msg00352.html

5.10 (in squeeze) will be desupported by upstream at the release of 5.14. According to my reading of that announcement this will effectively end security support for 5.10 at the same time (since 5.10.0 was released more than three years ago).

Package maintenance policies

Bug tagging notes

We should probably define some useful usertags. Some initial thoughts:

New upstream release checklist

These are some things to consider when uploading new upstream version to unstable

All versions

Point releases only

$ wb nmu libpar-packer-perl libdevel-cover-perl libclass-xsaccessor-perl libcommon-sense-perl libdevel-mat-dumper-perl . ANY . -m "Rebuild against perlapi-5.26.2." --extra-depends 'perl-base (>= 5.26.2)'

New major upstream versions only (when uploading to unstable)

NOTE: this list is not comprehensive, there is lots more detail involved in a major version update

For a stable update

In May 2016 an update was prepared for stable including a mass-import of relevant patches from an upstream point release. This worked well, but did result in one regression (826563). In future we should consider the changes and the likelihood of breaking things, and run regression tests (for example, use the perl.debian.net infrastructure to rebuild (in stretch/stretch-proposed-updates) all packages depending on perl. This takes a day or two).