Good Evening (well, it was evening when I was writing this), Having just released a new version of DBD::Informix, I've gotten a couple of bug reports from CPAN Testers about not being able to install it - which is no vast surprise since those people typically do not have the relevant software installed (which, in this case, means IBM Informix ESQL/C). However, some of them don't have DBI installed either, and that absence causes the Makefile.PL with DBD::Informix to fail.
Questions for you: 1. Do you have a neat way of avoiding problems with DBI not being available, or do you just ignore the reports from CPAN Testers? 2. Is it me or is it silly that the CPAN Testers requirement for 'cannot install the module because the pre-requisites are missing' is to exit with a 0 (success) status? It grates horribly on my sense of what is appropriate to report a failure as success. 3. Does anyone use ExtUtils::AutoInstall to assist? I've had it in DBD::Informix for a while (read several years) but have just done the basic testing with a Perl without DBI installed, and ExtUtils::AutoInstall doesn't seem to help because I 'use DBI::DBD' and 'DBI' in various places. I'm quite willing to look at your source code so if you have a mechanism in place and working -- just tell me which module to download. Or you can explain in email with illustrations. At the moment, to satisfy the CPAN Testers crowd, I think I'd have to have a dummy Makefile.PL that (a) arranged to install DBI and then (b) ran more or less the current Makefile.PL. I'm sure that isn't kosher, but I'm not sure how else to do it, and I am therefore inclined to ignore the reports, but I'd really rather not waste their time, or my time, poking around looking at their bogus (but automatically generated) problem reports. (Does anyone else get spam in [EMAIL PROTECTED] messages? If so, do you just reject them or do you do anything more fanciful with them?) -- Jonathan Leffler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2008.0229 - http://dbi.perl.org "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused."
