Dependencies of a CPAN package

[dacav]

Hello Perl folk!

I'm currently in the process of improving a Perl package I wrote: App::PFT.
It's time for me to decide the version of my dependencies. This is a task I
postponed up to now, but it is now time to get it right.

I'm wondering what would be the version assignment that works better. I
started therefore by installing my package on different GNU/Linux
distributions via Docker, and to check how it goes.

The first one was Debian Jessie. Before being able to install it clean I had
to place a couple of Debian dependencies (locales-all, liblocal-lib-perl for
local::lib, make and gcc). After that, the installation of App::PFT went
smooth (comprehensive of unit-test), and I could see the following
dependencies:

Carp 1.3301
Cwd 3.48_01
Encode 2.60
Encode::Locale 1.05
Exporter 5.71
File::Basename 2.85
File::Path 2.09
File::Spec 3.48_01
File::Spec::Functions 3.48_01
IO::File 1.16
Text::Markdown 1.000031
Scalar::Util 1.38
YAML::Tiny 1.70

So far so good. I thought I could take these versions and declare a
dependency to anything greater or equal. Just out of curiosity I also tried
the same on Ubuntu 16.04:

Carp 1.36
Cwd 3.56
Encode 2.72
Encode::Locale 1.05
Exporter 5.72
File::Basename 2.85
File::Path 2.09
File::Spec 3.56
File::Spec::Functions 3.56
IO::File 1.16
Text::Markdown 1.000031
Scalar::Util 1.41
YAML::Tiny 1.70

Different versions here! And I did this literally a couple of minutes later!

I'm a bit surprised to see that Ubuntu installed via CPAN different version
numbers. Of course I would expect different things if I was installing from
the Debian's repository VS Ubuntu's repositories. What I didn't expect is to
see differences when I install on both distributions via CPAN.

Do you maybe know why this happens?

Thanks in advance

[Eric Pozharski]

with <oekpun$oe7$1...@gioia.aioe.org> dacav wrote:

> I'm currently in the process of improving a Perl package I wrote:
> App::PFT. It's time for me to decide the version of my dependencies.
> This is a task I postponed up to now, but it is now time to get it
> right.

I suggest you stop wasting your time. Ship without versioned
dependencies; wait for couple of days (two weeks should be fine);
inspect FAILs of cpantesters; re-iterate.

*SKIP*

> I'm a bit surprised to see that Ubuntu installed via CPAN different
> version numbers. Of course I would expect different things if I was
> installing from the Debian's repository VS Ubuntu's repositories. What
> I didn't expect is to see differences when I install on both
> distributions via CPAN.
> Do you maybe know why this happens?

I don't see your versionful dependency of perl. What could possibly go
wrong here?

--
Torvalds' goal for Linux is very simple: World Domination
Stallman's goal for GNU is even simpler: Freedom