[php-maint] Bug#331035: [Fwd: Re: CDBS and Pear packages]

[Charles Fry]

Here is Piotr's mailing list on some of the issues raised in this bug
report:

----- Forwarded message from Piotr Roszatycki <Piotr_Roszatycki at netia.net.pl> -----

From: Piotr Roszatycki <Piotr_Roszatycki at netia.net.pl>
Subject: Re: CDBS and Pear packages
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 09:40:47 +0200
To: Charles Fry <debian at frogcircus.org>
Cc: debian-webapps at lists.debian.org

Dnia Friday 30 of September 2005 02:12, Charles Fry napisa?:
> The only thing that bothers me, and I don't use Pear enough to know
> whether or not this is a real issue, is that when installing non-Debian
> Pear packages, it seems to me that it would be nice to be able to use a
> Debian Pear package to meet a dependency.
>
> Isn't a similar problem faced with cpan? Does anybody know how it is
> dealt with there?

CPAN installs the packages into /usr/local hierarchy and it doesn't have own 
big registry of all installed (dpkg and cpan) packages because it autodetects 
the packages trying to load them.

If I would like to install i.e. Foo::Bar which requires Baz::Bar, the second 
package is just searched in default path 
(/etc:perl:/usr/local/lib/perl:/usr/share/perl:/usr/lib/perl:...). The 
version numbers are placed in module's file so the registry contained 
metainformation is not necessary. 

Perhaps the PEAR could be modified so .registry directory might be searched in 
directories from include_path. I don't know if it would work because the 
*.reg files contains hardcoded paths. See console_getopt.reg:

...{s:18:"Console/Getopt.php";a:2:{s:4:"role";s:3:"php";s:12:"install
ed_as";s:33:"/usr/share/php/Console/Getopt.php";}...

Even you move i.e. documents from /usr/share/php/docs 
to /usr/share/doc/$PACKAGE/, the PEAR package manager still have old values. 
After `pear upgrade' you will have old files in /usr/share/doc and new files 
in /usr/share/php/docs. Again, the md5sums for Debian packages and 
metainformations in /var/lib/dpkg won't match with PEAR metainformations 
from /usr/share/php/.registry.

I see only one clean solution. Just set the PEAR default directory to 
the /usr/local/share/php. The worst scenario is that PEAR installs the second 
copy of needed package into /usr/local/share/php (i.e. Console_Getopt) but it 
is FAR better than overwriting the dpkg's files in /usr/share/php.

-- 
 .''`.    Piotr Roszatycki, Netia SA
: :' :    mailto:Piotr_Roszatycki at netia.net.pl
`. `'     mailto:dexter at debian.org
  `-

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
If our road signs
Catch your eye
Smile
But don't forget
To buy
Burma-Shave
http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1963/if_our_road
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-php-maint/attachments/20051001/0f6d94b5/attachment.pgp