Building a debian package for a CPAN module, and a known issue

The good news is that building a debian package from the source of a CPAN module is easy, thanks to the dh-make-perl tool.

The bad news is that the configuration of dh-make-perl can lead to the generation of a debian package containing unneeded files, and as a collateral effect preventing package installation as the files belong to more than one package.

For example you can end up with something like:

dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/scnlibpoe-filter-stomp-perl_0.01_all.deb (--unpack):

trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/perl/5.8/perllocal.pod', which is also in package scnlibpoe-component-client-stomp-perl

Somebody suggests a change in the configuration file used by dh-make-perl.

The same result can be achieved by applying this change to your debian/rules file:

--- debian/rules (revision 32211)

+++ debian/rules (working copy)

@@ -51,8 +51,11 @@

- rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty --parents $(TMP)/usr/lib/perl5

+ rm -rfv $(TMP)/usr/lib