CC'ing the dev list....

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Liz Rea <lrea@nekls.org> wrote:
   On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Chris Nighswonger <cnighswonger@foundations.edu> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Liz Rea <lrea@nekls.org> wrote:
Backing down the version to 2.0301 to match the Lenny available package.

Hmm... 2.05 is the newest version of this module in cpan. I think Makefile.PL should always ask for what is truly the newest version rather than being tied to a particular distribution.

my $0.02 worth

Kind Regards,
Chris

 
I did actually think about this before I did it. :)

I asked around if it would be better to update the documentation to take the package out of the install script and add it to the CPAN list, or do what I did, and the general consensus was that backing down the required version was a better option (since the newer version doesn't add any functionality that we actually use), so I did that.

The reason is that a lot of people use Lenny (and or Ubuntu, which would cause this same issue), and Squeeze/Sid aren't stable yet (even though they work fine, I know that). Every indication I've gotten is that "we" prefer packaged versions of things instead of pulling direct from CPAN. I chose to eliminate the error message when installing on Lenny/Ubuntu from Makefile.PL, and allow a required version that was lower than the current version to help eliminate a bad user experience (An error!!! OMG! What do I do!). 

I truly don't care which way it's done: we can remove it from the package script and add it to the modules requiring installation through CPAN, no problem. I'll do those patches too, if necessary. 

That said, I don't think the reasoning behind this particular patch is unsound, based on past precedent.

I'm not familiar with what has been the rule in the past. However, it is my opinion we should establish one standard rather than attempting to work around two different ones.

If we are going to take the Debian/Ubuntu repo version as the standard, we should set all modules available in those repos to the max current version available in those repos, and be sure that policy is clear in the docs. We should also develop only over those currently available versions. (I realize in this particular case there is no programmatically compelling reason to use the latest version, but that is not always the case.)

FWIW, I favor Debian/Ubuntu personally, but am concerned about this from a policy standpoint.

If we indeed see this as the best direction to go, I recommend we add something like this to our coding guidelines: When/Where available, Koha Perl dependencies should be sourced from the current stable Debian/Ubuntu repository. Perl dependencies not available in the repository should be sourced from CPAN. Code development should be limited to the most current version available from the proper source. Exceptions to this policy may be made by gaining consensus from the developer section of the community.

or some such language...

Kind Regards,
Chris