At any given time, the package perl
should represent the current
stable upstream version of Perl revision 5 (see Perl 6,
Appendix A).
Only one package may contain the /usr/bin/perl
binary and that
package must either be perl
or a dependency of that package (see
Base Package, Section 1.2).
Where possible, Perl should be compiled to provide binary compatibility to at least the last released package version to allow a grace period over which binary module packages may be re-built against the new package (see Binary Modules, Section 3.4.2).
The perl-base
package must provide
perlapi-version
for all released versions it is
compatible with.
In order to provide a minimal installation of Perl for use by applications
without requiring the whole of Perl to be installed, the perl-base
package contains the binary and a basic set of modules.
As Perl is currently used by such things as update-alternatives
and some package maintainer scripts, it must be priority required and
marked as essential.
Note that the perl-base
package is intended only to provide for
exceptional circumstances and the contents may change. In general only
packages which form part of the base system should declare a dependency on
perl-base
rather than perl
.
Perl searches three different locations for modules, referred to in this document as core in which modules distributed with Perl are installed, vendor for packaged modules and site for modules installed by the local administrator.
The module search path (@INC) in the Debian packages has been ordered to include these locations in the following order:
/usr/local/lib/perl/version /usr/local/share/perl/version
Where version indicates the current Perl version ($Config{version}[1]).
/usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5
/usr/lib/perl/version /usr/share/perl/version
perl
packages for which the current package is binary
compatible are included if present.
In each of the directory pairs above, the lib
component is for
binary (XS) modules, and share
for architecture-independent
(pure-perl) modules.
The POD files and manual pages which do not refer to programs may be split out
into a separate perl-doc
package.
Manual pages distributed with Perl packages must be installed into the standard directories:
/usr/share/man/man1
with the extension .1.
/usr/share/man/man3
with the extension .3perl.
Debian Perl Policy
version 1.20debian-policy@lists.debian.org