[Kolab-devel] Making perl-kolab a real library

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Gunnar Wrobel <wrobel at pardus.de> writes:

> Hi!
>
> perl-kolab is intended to be a Perl library and only installs files
> within your perl library location.
>
> But for a library perl-kolab knows way too much:
>
>  - it "knows" that there is a kolabconf program
>  - it also requires a sendmail binary with a fixed location
>  - it expects certain kolab configuration files in fixed locations 
>
> In principle perl-kolab fully depends on the kolabd package at the
> moment. While kolabd also depends on perl-kolab.
>
> I consider this a problem for both packaging and maintenance of the
> code and would like to split all unnecessary knowledge from the
> perl-kolab package into the kolabd package which would result in a
> real perl library.
>
> This would not only resolve the circular dependency but would also
> allow to get rid of the current configure script within perl-kolab so
> we can just use the standard perl mechanism for installing packages. 
>
> I attach a patch that demonstrates the necessary changes roughly. It
> is only a draft and has not yet been tested.
>
> In addition I would like to split kolabconf into its own package. It
> is an important tool for the Kolab server and I think it makes sense
> to develop it also as a specific perl package with its own rpm.
>
> I'd be happy about comments. If people agree I'd open a bug for this
> and slowly convert perl-kolab as described. 

The conversion of perl-kolab has now been finished. I'm still testing
this on my development installation and there might still be some
fixes necessary but the basic build mechanism has been fixed in the
way I intended to.

The changes turned into a more general cleanup of the perl-kolab
module. This included collecting the different copyright notices that
were strewn all over the files into a single "AUTHORS" file within
each packge (perl-kolab and the new kolabconf). I'd like to ask the
other dev's to give this file a brief check if it represents the
different persons and companies involved in a correct way.

Technical changes for the OpenPKG distribution:

Actually there is not much of a change here. The only significant
thing is that there is now a new kolabconf package and kolabd depends
on it. The files installed should be the same as before. 

The only change that I would like to request is to downgrade the
perl-kolab version from 5.8.8 to the Kolab server version (currently
2.1.99). This might be too disruptive to the upgrade process though
and there is definitely no other reason for this request besides the
fact that I find it strange to have the version coupled to the perl
version that is being installed.

Technical changes for the native Kolab ports:

In the long run the new structure will allow the Kolab project to
providew usable source packages (*.tar.gz) that you'll be able to
download and use in your package definitions. Right now you'd have to
create these packages yourself which shouldn't be too hard from CVS
though.

You can use the new Makefile.PL scripts in the packages and run

perl Makefile.PL
make dist

to get your source package.

Most distributions should have some standard definition of a perl
package installation and I hope you will be able to use these default
tools to get the updated package definition in no time.

Cheers,

Gunnar

-- 
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