Some notes/TODO relating to perl interpreter maintenance.

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/perl-maintainers/2011-February/001678.html is Niko's Feb 2011 post about work needed.

Dominic Hargreaves will coordinate the perl 5.12/perl 5.14 transition. Please use perl@packages.debian.org as the main contact point.

5.12 is in unstable, repository at http://git.debian.org/?p=perl/perl-5.12.git

5.14 is not uploaded yet, repository at http://git.debian.org/?p=perl/perl-5.14.git

Work related to perl 5.12

Work related to Perl 5.14

Rebuilding packages

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 http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-perl/scripts/perl-5.10-transition/perlapi.out?view=markup can be used to determine the necessary binNMUs; the order also matters because the dependencies form a chain.

Example: libdevel-caller-perl is needed by libdevel-lexalias-perl, libpadwalker-perl is needed by libdevel-caller-perl etc.

Other issues

List based on http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/perl-maintainers/2010-March/001121.html

TopGit use

Integrating a new upstream release

Originally from http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/perl-maintainers/2010-March/001120.html

Note: this should probably be merged into README.source

 git import-orig --no-merge --pristine-tar ../perl-5.11.5.tar.bz2
 tg create merge-5.11.5 upstream
 git config --add merge.renameLimit 20000
 echo 'Temporary branch for merging 5.11.5' > .topmsg && git commit -a -m "$(cat .topmsg)"
  # piping from 'tg info master' to 'tg depend add' would be cleaner...
 git cat-file blob master:.topdeps > .topdeps 
 git commit -m 'Prepare for upgrading all the dependency branches of the master branch' .topdeps
 tg update # recurses to the dependency branches
  # [resolve conflicts manually where needed]
 git checkout refs/top-bases/master
  # merge the result into the master TopGit base 
  # the actual branch will follow with 'tg update'
 git merge merge-5.11.5
  # the base is not a real branch but more like a tag, so it needs an update now
 git update-ref refs/top-bases/master HEAD
 git checkout master
 tg update
 tg delete merge-5.11.5

Other

Upstream support policy

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

5.10 (in lenny and 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:

Bits from the perl maintainers

Possible topics for a d-d-a mail shortly after the completion of the perl 5.12 transition: