[Mimedefang] MIME-tools 5.415 on Fedora or other RPM distros with perl <= 5.8.5

[AGHEMO Danilo]

Hi all!

Is it safe to use mimedefang 2.49 with MIME::Tools 5.411a (patched)?
Should it be (by far) better to use MIME::Tools 5.415 instead?

Now, if you want, read over... at your own risk! ;)

As you know MIME::Tools 5.411a and 5.415 have different requires:

	MIME-tools 5.411 MIME::Base64 2.04 and MIME::QuotedPrint 2.03
        MIME-tools 5.415 MIME::Base64 3.03

I would like to install mimedefang 2.49 on Fedora Core 1/2/3 in a
"kickstart" fashion: the installation should be automated easily, that
is, it should be just a matter of saying "yum install mimedefang".

Now, these are the "provides" of the perl package from Fedora:
 
	perl 5.8.1-92 fc1 MIME::Base64 2.20 MIME::QuotedPrint 2.20
        perl 5.8.3-16 fc1 MIME::Base64 2.21 MIME::QuotedPrint 2.21
        perl 5.8.3-18 fc2 MIME::Base64 2.21 MIME::QuotedPrint 2.21
        perl 5.8.5-9  fc3 MIME::Base64 3.01 MIME::QuotedPrint 3.01
        perl 5.8.5-13 dev MIME::Base64 3.01 MIME::QuotedPrint 3.01
        perl 5.8.6        MIME::Base64 3.05 MIME::QuotedPrint 3.03

Thus I've no problem at all using MIME::Tools 5.411 since it requires
MIME::Base64 2.04 and even Fedora Core 1 has a newer version. But
MIME::Tools 5.415 needs MIME::Base64 3.03 and even Fedora Core 3 (or the
current development rpm) has an older version. I've checked the 5.8.6
source tarbal and it contains an adeguate version of MIME::Base64, but
there is no Fedora rpm for 5.8.6.

So I created an rpm called perl-MIME-Base64, containing the newer
MIME::Base64 to override the one distibuted with the perl package, with
some attention to conflicting files (installed to vendor_dir with no man
pages).

I'm maintaining my rpms (mimedefang, MIME-Tools and others) using mach.
Its chrooted build system relies on apt to resolve package dependecies
and installation issues. The packages are built in a given order and
published to my rpm repository. Now, apt complains about perl having
"Obsoletes: perl-MIME-Base64" while there is a perl-MIME-Base64 package
that provides the needed MIME::Base64.

Maybe should I rebuild the perl packages with "Obsoletes:
perl-MIME-Base64 <= 3.03"? Maybe should I rename my package ad
perl-MIME-Base64-something? Maybe should I put something (what? can you
tell me?) inside my apt.conf to "prefer" perl-MIME-Base64?

Actually none of these seems smart to me.
So, is 5.415 really needed?

Regards,
Danilo