Thursday 29th October 2009
Fedora Project
Upstream for perl-Math-Pari released version 2.010802 yesterday so today I looked at doing the update in Fedora. Something I've been meaning to do for a long time is switch to using the system pari library rather than building it (and an old version of it too - 2.1.7 is the latest version still fully supported for the Perl Math::Pari module, whereas the system pari library is currently version 2.3.4) as part of perl-Math-Pari (which is actually severely frowned upon in Fedora and many other distributions).
The Math::Pari build system does now provide hooks for building against a system library, but if you do this it doesn't include as many tests nor as much documentation as it does if you build the library locally. However, I found it was quite easy to fix this problem by including the library sources even though I was linking against the system pari library, and patching Makefile.PL like this:
--- Math-Pari-2.010802/Makefile.PL.orig 2009-10-29 10:47:15.349216927 +0000
+++ Math-Pari-2.010802/Makefile.PL 2009-10-29 11:12:54.651293844 +0000
@@ -102,11 +102,13 @@
}
my %opts;
+
+# We want to build the docs and the test suite even though we're using the system pari lib
+build_tests $paridir; # Convert the test suite
+make_pod 'libPARI.pod', '-to_pod', $paridir; # Now the docs
+make_pod 'libPARI.dumb.pod', '-to_dumb_pod', $paridir;
+
unless ($common::parilib) {
- build_tests $paridir; # Convert the test suite
- make_pod 'libPARI.pod', '-to_pod', $paridir; # Now the docs
- make_pod 'libPARI.dumb.pod', '-to_dumb_pod', $paridir;
- # ... and paricfg.h
%opts = build_paricfg($paridir, $common::do_configure, $pari_version);
if ($ENV{MATH_PARI_REPORT_CODES}) {I also found that the test suite fell over on 64-bit builds because of missing results files. The pari test suite, when run normally, copies over the expected results from the 32-bit results directory if the expected file in the 64-bit results directory is missing, but that step was missing from the Math::Pari build, so I did it myself:
# If 64-bit test results missing, they should be copied from 32-bit test results
cd pari-%{pari_version}/src/test/in
for test in *; do
[ ! -f ../64/${test} ] && %{__cp} -a ../32/${test} ../64/${test}
done
cd -That was enough to get the test suite running and passing with the system pari version 2.3.4.
In order to ensure that the perl-Math-Pari package stays in step with the system pari package, I added a fixed version dependency on the system pari library to the perl-Math-Pari. I've requested watchcommits and watchbugzilla access to pari so I'll know when there's going to be a change.
The only issue now is that the system pari dependency now pulls in lots of unwanted dependencies:
# yum install perl-Math-Pari-2.010802-1.fc12.x86_64.rpm Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit Setting up Install Process ... --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ===================================================================================== Package Arch Version Repository Size ===================================================================================== Installing: perl-Math-Pari x86_64 2.010802-1.fc12 /perl-Math-Pari-2.010802-1.fc12.x86_64 869 k Installing for dependencies: Xaw3d x86_64 1.5E-14.fc11 fedora-dvd 170 k kpathsea x86_64 2007-42.fc11 fedora 118 k pari x86_64 2.3.4-2.fc11 fedora 1.4 M t1lib x86_64 5.1.2-3.fc11 fedora 214 k texlive x86_64 2007-42.fc11 fedora 2.2 M texlive-dvips x86_64 2007-42.fc11 fedora 200 k texlive-texmf noarch 2007-28.fc11 fedora 3.5 M texlive-texmf-dvips noarch 2007-28.fc11 fedora 392 k texlive-texmf-errata noarch 2007-6.fc11 fedora 4.8 k texlive-texmf-errata-dvips noarch 2007-6.fc11 fedora 4.9 k texlive-texmf-errata-fonts noarch 2007-6.fc11 fedora 5.0 k texlive-texmf-fonts noarch 2007-28.fc11 fedora 57 M xdvik x86_64 22.84.14-6.fc11 updates 735 k Transaction Summary ===================================================================================== Install 14 Package(s) Upgrade 0 Package(s) Total size: 66 M Total download size: 66 M Is this ok [y/N]: n Exiting on user Command Complete!
It's even worse on a system with no X libraries. So I've added my voice to the request to split the libraries in pari off to a subpackage in Bug #530565.