[Popcon-developers] Bug#730760: perl-base: IO::Socket::INET cannot cope with "option inet6" in /etc/resolv.conf

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 03:00:11PM +0100, Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 02:01:32PM +0200, Niko Tyni wrote:
> > (cc'ing the perl and libio-socket-ip-perl package maintainers too)
> > 
> > On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 12:09:43PM +0100, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 17 Jan 2014 10:19:33 +0000, Bob Ham wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > >A more pragmatic solution might be to use IO::Socket::IP instead.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I see now that IO::Socket::INET is only intended for IPv4; I hadn't
> > > > > realised that.  This problem showed up because the
> > > > > /usr/share/popularity-contest/popcon-upload script in
> > > > > popularity-contest makes use of IO::Socket::INET.  Perhaps this bug
> > > > > could be reassigned to the popularity-contest package so that it can
> > > > > be changed to use IO::Socket::IP instead?
> > 
> > > This is very annoying because IO::Socket::INET is part of perl-base but
> > > IO::Socket::IP is part of libio-socket-ip-perl. The whole design of 
> > > popcon-upload was to use only Essential pakages to keep a small footprint.
> > > 
> > > Would it be possible to have at least IO::Socket::INET6 in perl-base ?
> > > This would make perl-base IPv4/IPv6 agnostic. 
> > 
> > I believe the way forward is IO::Socket::IP, not IO::Socket::INET6.
> > The upstream plan seems to be to get IO::Socket::IP into Perl core
> > for 5.20, scheduled for May. If that happens, it makes sense to me
> > to put that in perl-base along with the old IO::Socket::INET.
> > 
> >  https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=116433#txn-1275004
> > 
> > In the meanwhile, it looks like libio-socket-ip-perl could be made to
> > depend only on perl-base, as it doesn't seem to use any modules outside
> > that. I think the situation fits the 'exceptional circumstances' clause
> > in the Perl policy.
> > 
> >  https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/perl-policy/ch-perl.html#s-base
> > 
> > Bill, would you be OK adding a dependency on libio-socket-ip-perl if it
> > didn't depend on perl/perl-modules ?
> 
> Yes, it would be fine, if IO::Socket::IP is planned to be essential.
> Thanks a lot!

I suspect this isn't quite what Niko was thinking. popcon-upload isn't
itself Essential so it doesn't seem necessary to make the preference
for only depending on Essential packages into a hard rule, I'd have
thought?

In fact, if we pull IO::Socket::IP into perl-base with perl 5.20,
making libio-socket-ip-perl Essential now may actually be harmful.

Dominic.