Subject: Stop turning CPAN modules into Cygwin packages
From: "Jerry D. Hedden" <[email-masked]>
To: "The Cygwin Mailing List" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Eric Blake" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:04:35 -0500
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>

Eric Blake wrote:
> A new package, perl-Error-0.17010-1, is now available for use.
>
> NEWS:
> =====
> This is a new package, providing the Error module for perl.

What is the point of making this a Cygwin package?  There
are no Cygwin specific changes, and it it can be installed
directly from CPAN using:
    cpan -i Error

This seems to be becoming a trend.  So far there are 8 CPAN
modules that have been made into Cygwin packages.  Only 3
have Cygwin specific changes that would justify them being
made into package:
    perl-Locale-gettext
    perl-Tk
    perl-libwin32

The other 5 have no Cygwin specific changes:
    perl-Error
    perl-ExtUtils-Depends
    perl-ExtUtils-PkgConfig
    perl-Module-Build
    perl-Win32-GUI

This seems like a bad practice.  It adds a maintenance
burden on the Cygwin system (because the packages will need
to be updated when the modules are updated), they needlessly
take up storage on the Cygwin servers, and turning them into
Cygwin packages adds no value over obtaining the modules
directly from CPAN.

Just because you can turn a CPAN module into a Cygwin
package doesn't mean that you should unless there are Cygwin
specific changes that need to be made.  Even then, a better
approach is to send the appropriate patches to the module's
maintainer so that they can be integrated into the code and
uploaded to CPAN.

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