[Credit for asking the "how to uninstall a perl module?" question goes to Archaic]
Hello, there was a decision to add DESTDIR support to all LFS and then eventually BLFS packages. However, there is a problem applying this approach to typical perl modules (let me use "Want" as a small example, you can download it from http://cpan.makeperl.org/authors/id/R/RO/ROBIN/Want-0.16.tar.gz). Try installing it naively into a DESTDIR: tar xf Want-0.16.tar.gz cd Want-0.16 perl Makefile.pl make make test make DESTDIR=/tmp/Want install This seems to work: $ find /tmp/Want -type f /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i486-linux/auto/Want/Want.so /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i486-linux/auto/Want/Want.bs /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i486-linux/auto/Want/.packlist /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i486-linux/Want.pm /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i486-linux/perllocal.pod /tmp/Want/usr/share/man/man3/Want.3 but actually doesn't work quite well: 1) it instals a /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i486-linux/perllocal.pod file, while the intent was to append to the existing file. 2) it writes a /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i486-linux/auto/Want/.packlist file. Looking in this file, one finds that each line starts with /tmp/Want In fact, with package management in place, both files are useless: one can use his package manager instead of "perldoc perllocal" to see the list of locally-installed modules, and the same package manager works well for uninstalling the module (instead of calling ExtUtils directly) once it is no longer needed. I.e.: 1) perllocal.pod should not be packaged as it is. It should be either removed completely or converted into a pair post-installation and post-removal scripts. 2) .packlist should be either adjusted or (better, as double package management is a bad idea) removed completely. In fact, Debian patches their perl (or, more precisely, the MakeMaker module) so that for "vendor" installs (see below), such files are not produced at all: perl Makefile.pl INSTALLDIRS=vendor # on Debian make make test make DESTDIR=/tmp/Want install $ find /tmp/Want -type f # on Debian /tmp/Want/usr/share/man/man3/Want.3pm /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/auto/Want/Want.so /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/auto/Want/Want.bs /tmp/Want/usr/lib/perl5/Want.pm OTOH, RedHat simply removes the uneeded files when packaging: http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewcvs/devel/perl-Want/perl-Want.spec?view=markup find $RPM_BUILD_ROOT -type f -name .packlist -exec rm -f {} ';' (not sure what they do with perllocal.pod, but it is not in the resulting package either) So here are the questions: 1) where should such issues be explained? 2) should LFS apply the MakeMaker perl patch that suppresses installation of .packlist and perllocal.pod files for vendor installs, or rely on the packager to remove them? -- Alexander E. Patrakov -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
