[rt-users] RT and the Perl Dependency Nightmare...

[Ruslan Zakirov]

On 9/9/05, Les Mikesell <les at futuresource.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 16:08, Ruslan Zakirov wrote:
> > >
> > > RedHat what?  RHEL4.x should work, along with Fedora FC2 and up and the
> > > free Centos4 rebuild of RHEL4.
> 
> > IMHO main problems with RH distros are:
> > 1) RT is not part of distribution, so AFAIU you can't get support from
> > RH(may be I'm wrong).
> 
> Does some distribution include/support the current RT version?
> 
> > 2) RH freeze package versions and then only applies patches
> > selectively. For eg in RH9 was 5.8.0 available only with a lot of
> > patches, when at the same time perl5.8.3(or may be 4) was available at
> > perl.org. I even couldn't compile that RH's perl from SRPM or it was
> > failing on the tests.
> 
> Usually that's a good thing, assuming the starting version is good
> enough.  After RH9, the distribution split into the fast-cycle
> Fedora which you use if you want frequent app-version updates
Exactly this change in FC makes it more attractive for RT.

> and RHEL (and the free rebuilds like Centos followed) where the
> updates are bugfix backports which you use if you don't want
> frequent behavior-changing updates.
IMHO backports are root of the problems. Changes between 5.8.5 and
5.8.7 is not 5 patches, but 1000(may be less or may be more). And if
someone in RH backports 1-100 patches it doesn't mean he only fixes
bugs, but he also may unhide "new" bugs. You can't just take 1, 13 and
199 patches and apply it to previouse version because patch 13 makes
bug XXX bite you more often then it was before(this bug was fixed in
patch 7). And in this case RH's perl maintainer couldn't fix it, he is
not perl hacker(or may be he is, I don't know).  Perl p5p doesn't care
about such bugs, if there is new version available where bug is not
introducible then it's your problem how to fix it.

> 
> FC2 included perl-5.8.3 which was OK for RT3.  FC4 is at 5.8.6.
> RHEL4 (and thus Centos4) have perl-5.8.5, probably with some
> bugs fixed by backporting later changes.   None of those should
> have perl-related issues regarding RT other than how to install
> and maintain the many needed extra modules that aren't included
> in the distribution.
> 
> --
>   Les Mikesell
>    les at futuresource.com
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Best regards, Ruslan.