[rt-users] Perl is Broken after Centos 5.4 update

[Gary L. Greene, Jr.]

On Friday 13 November 2009 10:16:06 am Jerrad Pierce wrote:
> > those too parented in the site_perl tree. IMO, the need for a source
> > built/local build of Perl is NEVER a good solution to hand to users.
> > Running a ticketing tool shouldn't require a user to build a local copy
> > of a core distribution component.
> 
> It's got nothing to do with RT. Existing package managers do not play
> well with Perl's modules/libraries. The same goes for any language
> that lets you install updates outside of the platform's rigid package
> system.
> 
> RPM's can execute initialization scripts, and there's no reason why
> RedHat shouldn't check to see what the *real* version of the library
> on disk is before blindly clobbering it.
> 
> Your solution of "compile your own packages of potentially conflicting
> libraries that will install to site_perl" doesn't sound much
> friendlier than "use another perl." Arguably, a better solution would
> be for RT to use local::lib, but it's relatively new.
> 

I'm sorry, but you cannot expect RPM (or any other packaging system like DPKG, 
etc.) to know ANYTHING about CPAN or the other way around. The two systems are 
completely orthogonal and have VERY different philosophical views regarding 
software management. RPM only wants to deal with RPM packages with their file 
manifests, and CPAN is more like the BSD ports system in the fact that its a 
source build, every time. Either you use RPMs or you risk breaking the 
dependency chain on your system, which I as an experienced administrator DON'T 
want to deal with.

The best solution is to get people willing to sponsor packaging RT for RH in 
the EPEL repository, SuSE on the OBS, Mandriva contrib, and Debian Unstable. 
(The reason for the given distributions listed is that should cover the major 
flavours out there fairly well since anything in EPEL will be usable for 
CentOS and RHEL; having it in OBS for SuSE would make it possible to have 
releases for SLES 10-11 and OpenSuSE 11.x; Mandriva contrib since they've one 
of the most comprehensive collection of Perl packages to any other RPM 
distribution, and their flavour of RPM is not 100% compatible to RH, SuSE, 
etc.; and Debian Unstable packages in most cases will work on Ubuntu for those 
that want/need Ubuntu LTS compatibility.) Yes, it's not perfect, but that's 
the breaks in the F/OSS world.

Upping the ante and requiring a person to manage the myriad of modules that RT 
requires is a non-trivial task for non-Perl savvy people (I am well versed in 
Perl so it's no issue to me with my custom scripts to auto package them up 
using cpan2rpm (generates specs for me which then are fed to my autobuilder), 
but I can see where this could definitely impact the user base of RT overall.)

-- 
Gary L. Greene, Jr.
IT Operations
Minerva Networks, Inc.
Cell:  (650) 704-6633
Phone: (408) 240-1239