Show Debian package of a Perl module

[nichtich]

Is there a way to show if there is a debian package of a selected perl release? For instance RDF-Trine (current version 1.007) has been published as Debian packages:

• version 1.000 in stable
• version 1.007 in stable
• version 1.007 in stable

I am not sure about the naming-policy but it looks like one get a HTML page at packages.debian.org:

$package =~ s/::/-/;
$name = lc($package);
$url = 'http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=lib{$name}-perl&searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all';

Maybe there is an API to query this information and to show it at metacpan.

[monken]

I would prefer if authors would provide the name of the package in the META file. That $name trick doesn't always work since the packages don't follow a strict pattern (e.g. libwww-perl for all LWP related modules). We can come up with a key they can use. We should also keep in mind that Debian is not the only distribution out there :)

[nichtich]

Ok but where and how to put in in the META file?

[monken]

that is really up to you. You can create a new x_dist_packages attribute (or something similar) that contains the package names for different dists. It would be nice to keep in mind that there is not just debian out there :)