It's pretty much an aknowledged fact that dev-perl/* is huge beyond reasoning, but its size doesn't seem to be on the path of diminishing any time soon. I'd like to propose breaking dev-perl into multiple branches (the details of which will be worked out in the bug hopefully). As a base suggestion, here are some thoughts: perl-core: Those modules that supercede modules that were bundled with the dev-lang/perl installation. This breakout might also give us room in the future for easier blocking of superceded modules (ie, we have an ebuild for something that is older than what came with perl-X.X.X), as well as an easier method of ensuring that a user is up to speed (think makemaker fiascos). perl-testing: Those modules that deal only with testing - like the Test-* suites, maybe the pod-* suites, and any random tools that have to do with testing in perl perl-gui: Those modules that deal with sdl, gtk, glade, etc. perl-net(web?) - you know - net-*, maybe some cgi-*, etc. perl-misc perl-something Hopefully this at least gets the idea across. I don't believe we've ever avoided this possibility, just haven't actively sought it. If a plan can be hammered out on what goes where, I'm willing to do the grunt work (of course not denying the need for any and all help). Thoughts?
Random points after a short thought: Perl is still mostly about text processing, so where's the perl-text or maybe perl-parser or perl-data category? :) That would probably become the biggest category and in there could go Text::*, XML::*, HTML::*, Parse::*, MIME::* and probably a bunch of others I missed. Instead of perl-testing I'd create something like perl-dev for Test::* and all that "internal" stuff like Devel::*, Getopt::*, WeakRef, Class::*, Heap (the latter two I don't know, they just look like they would fit) and others. All the Digest::* and Crypt::* might also add up for something like perl-algo. In that process the packages should probably also get a unified format (either all lower case like the rest of the tree or the CamelCase way most currently are). If you don't start before end of February I could probably help out a bit.
This is still on my list, but after realizing a touch of a QA nightmare I created a different bug that has a touch more precedence, namely the fact that as is we have perl moudle ebuilds that downgrade module versions depending on your version of perl and what came in its core install.
If anyone wants to carry this on, that would be cool. The basic concept was that dev-perl was too large as is, and that perhaps categorization would be in better order. Unfortunately, hiccups for users of binary distribution of gentoo have issues with the changes no matter what we do.
Mass re-assign.
Is this still up in the air?
it'd be nice, but no one seems to be interested any more. i'm willing to close it if you want (it was more for managebility than anything else)
666 - mkay closing this. :)
