Maintaining the be*st
(fighting Perl and CPAN module authors for a better world)
Ulrich Habel (rhaen@NetBSD.org)

Not everything...
Is settled ...
...thanks for the courage to all developers...

NetBSD...
NetBSD is a multi architecture operating system
which has its roots in 386BSD.
NetBSD supports over 54 ports which can be built
from a single source tree. It's well known for its
clearness of code and portability.

Quote / Tales
„gcc finds bugs in Linux,
NetBSD finds bugs in gcc.“
Michael Dexter, Systems 2008

NetBSD Package Collection
The NetBSD package collection is a subtree inside the
NetBSD project. The goal of the project is to provide a
mature and stable package management system.
pkgsrc is:
● A sourcecode management system
● A buildsystem
● A system to administrate binary packages
● Independend of the Operating System

pkgsrc in detail
● Available for more than 15 platforms
● Forked from the FreeBSD ports system in 1997
● Wrappers are used to provide an OS independend
layer
● Is the only usable way to build software on HPUX
and AIX
● Provides an advanced Solaris 7/8/9 userland

...
...catch breath...

Who am I?
● Ulrich Habel
● IRC: Rhaen
● Blog: http://www.pkgbox.org
● NetBSD developer since 2007
● Active inside the NetBSD Community since 1999
● Work area Perl, p5-*
● Perl Smoking, cpan-testing

Agenda
● Perl and pkgsrc
● Fix only what's broken
● Patch - what's the best way?
● A management besides CPAN?
● Dependencies
● Up-to-date Check of Perl modules in pkgsrc
● Fighting CPAN (Modules|Authors)
● Perl Smoking & CPAN Smoking

Perl and pkgsrc
● Perl is an important part of the NetBSD Package
Collection
● The last bulkbuild from pkgsrc-2008Q4 resulted in:
– 8222 packages in total
– 3483 packages had a dependency to Perl

Growth of /p5-* in pkgsrc

Fix only what's broken
● pkgsrc has its home on many platforms and OS
● patches need to be applied cleanly everywhere
without breaking an architecture

Patch – what's the right way?
[...]
case \"$osvers\" in
0.9*|1.[012]*|1.3|1.3.1)
d_setregid=\"$undef\"
d_setreuid=\"$undef\"
;;
esac
case \"$osvers\" in
0.9*|1.*|2.*|3.*|4.*)
d_getprotoent_r=\"$undef\"
d_getprotobyname_r=\"$undef\"
d_getprotobynumber_r=\"$undef\"
[...]
(src: hints/netbsd.sh)

Correct or false?
--- hints/netbsd.sh.orig
+++ hints/netbsd.sh
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ case \"$osvers\" in
;;
esac
case \"$osvers\" in
-0.9*|1.*|2.*|3.*|4.*)
+0.9*|1.*|2.*|3.*|4.*|5.*)
d_getprotoent_r=\"$undef\"

Problems with dependencies
● Modules depend on each other
● What is broken if a module can't be built anymore?

A management besides CPAN?
● CPAN works well for CPAN modules
● CPAN is horrible slow on older hardware (Ex.:
Installation of Catalyst on Soekris Net-4801 ~ 36
hours)
● CPAN isn't able to work with patches in a general
way suitable for the package collection
● CPAN doesn't care for binary packages
● User experience – one package management

Dependencies part I
Perl – Modul (Makefile.PL):
- 'netbsd' => [ '' , '-lcurses -ltermcap' ],
+ 'netbsd' => {
+ 'bsd' => [ '' => '-lcurses -ltermcap' ],
+ 'ncurses' => [ '' => '-lncurses' ],
+ 'default' => 'ncurses'
+ },
Inside of the pkgsrc Makefile:
.include \"../../devel/ncurses/buildlink3.mk\"

Up-to-date check of moduls
● Once a week all the modules are checked if they
are out-of-date (p2c)
● Report for all modules or per maintainer
● In YAML available
● „Maintainer Blame Report“
http://www.pkgbox.org/p2c

p2c – pkgsrc update report

p2c - „Maintainer blame report“

Problems with Perl modules I
● Common problem: wrong or misformed version
strings
Example: Calendar::Simple
● Current version CPAN: 1.20
● $version is being generated by Subversion
revision numbers

Calendar::Simple
● version string inside the module:
our $VERSION =
sprintf \"%d\", '$Revision: 44 $ ' =~ /(\\d+)/;
● Check for the version of the modules
perl -MCalendar::Simple \\
-e 'print $Calendar::Simple::VERSION. \"\\n\"'
44

Calendar::Simple
● Version check using the CPAN module
perl ­MCPAN \\
­e 'printf(\"CPAN Ver: %s\\n\", CPAN::Shell­>expand(\"Module\",
\"Calendar::Simple\")­>cpan_version);'
CPAN Ver: 44

Problems with Perl modules II
● version downgrades
● pkgsrc uses the version number of a module to
determine if a package is newer
● CPAN allows floating point version strings
● Solution: unresolved

Example devel/p5-AnyEvent
Revision history for Perl extension AnyEvent.
4.34 Thu Feb 12 18:32:45 CET 2009
- [...]
4.331 Tue Jan 6 21:07:25 CET 2009
- [...]
4.33 Fri Nov 21 02:35:40 CET 2008
- [...]

Problems with Perl modules III
● Missing Changelogs
2007-05-21 <joshua@always.joy.eth.net>
* Event is now stored in GIT. You can grab a
copy with
\"git clone git://nirmalvihar.info/home/joshua/event.git\".
I will not be updating this ChangeLog anymore
because the full history plus changelog will be
stored in GIT.
● Unfortunatelly the dns fails with resolving

Do you smoke?
● Perl smoke testing
– Downloading Perl of the GIT repo
– Compiling of Perl and running the test suite
smokers-reports@perl.org
– Support by module Test::Smoke
– current builds:
FreeBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, Win32, HPUX,
AIX, Solaris, Linux

Do you smoke – issues
● perl.org does not accept mail from dynamic Ips
● Mail doesn't protect privacy of the sending host
● Test::Smoke is in full development, self-update
would be useful (they are working on it)

Do you smoke? CPAN
● Testing of all available modules on CPAN
● Results will be sent to cpan-testers@cpan.org
● Simple:
cpan> install CPAN::Reporter
cpan> o conf init test_report

Do you smoke – CPAN II
● Install the module CPAN::Reporter::Smoker for
bulk testing (smoke testing)
● It's useful to set up a mirror of CPAN (CPAN::Mini)

Do you smoke – CPAN issues
● documentation is just bad – or missing - or....
● Full setup of a mail server required
● sendmail as binary is possible – but the smoke
hangs until the mail has been delivered
● HTTP Delivery possible - anyone?

Seti? Smoke everyone!
● Using CPAN::Reporter we could improve the quality
of CPAN
● Better code will make CPAN work more efficiently
● Communikation author – user has to be improved
● Make it simpler

Quote/Tales
„Where do you want to go today?“
Microsoft, 1994

Questions?
● Ask them!
● Presentation:
http://pkgbox.org/Perl
btw, NetBSD will be released soon