[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Policy for migrating library consumers to subslots

[Martin Vaeth]

Kent Fredric <kentfredric@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> On 27 September 2013 05:57, Ciaran McCreesh
><ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com>wrote:
>
>> virtual/perl-* is self-inflicted.
>
> How would you recommend it?

For those which are provided by perl itself, you could have
a corresponding useflag of dev-lang/perl and make a use dependency:
If the main perl tarball does not provide the package, the perl ebuild
can pull in the corresponding package as a dependency.

IMHO, virtual/perl-* are only useful when there are cases that
a package must depend on a _particular version_ of that virtual:
I considered it always strange that most of the perl packages are
installed in duplicate only because the virtual version and the
version provided by perl do not match. This is appropriate if
something really needs a newer version, but not just because something
*must* depend on the virtual only because some perl versions do
not provide it.