"Where is perldb?" or "Package debug provides nil"

Hi Packagers! Say I want to use perldb in XEmacs-21.0. So I see who provides this feature: (package-get-package-provider 'perldb) Hmmh.. Lucky as I am, I have it installed, so: (find-function-noselect 'perldb) (#<buffer "gud.el"> . 86738) (locate-library "gud.el") "/export/home/tmp/packages-21.0/lisp/debug/gud.el" Ah, it's part of the debug package. Hmmh! package debug is understating its utility enormously with `provides nil': (package-get-info-find-package package-get-base 'debug) ((standards-version 1.0 version "1.03" author-version "21.0b42" date "1998-06-01" build-date "1998-06-01" maintainer "XEmacs Development Team <xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org&gt;&quot; distribution contrib priority low category "prog" dump nil description "GUD, gdb, dbx debugging support." filename "debug-1.03-pkg.tar.gz" md5sum "8714c8ed2dd221501b2ec9818c773d29" size 90336 provides nil requires (xemacs-base) type regular)) How is the provides property generated? Could this be a systematic error affecting other packages as well? I can answer the second one I think: (mapcan (function (lambda (p) (unless (plist-get (cadr p) 'provides) (list (car p))))) package-get-base) ;; These are the package with a 'provides property of nil: (sounds-au sounds-wav tooltalk edict egg-its leim locale debug) Best, Adrian -- Adrian Aichner Applications Engineer Teradyne GmbH Semiconductor Test Group Telephone +49/89/41861(0)-208 Dingolfinger Strasse 2 Fax +49/89/41861-217 D-81673 MUENCHEN E-mail aichner(a)ecf.teradyne.com