So here I am ripping all the htmlifypods code out of MakeMaker and I
come upon this:
#
# When we eval a Makefile.PL in a subdirectory, that one will ask
# us (the parent) for the values and will prepend "..", so that
# all files to be installed end up below OUR ./blib
#
%Prepend_dot_dot =
qw(
INST_BIN 1 INST_EXE 1 INST_LIB 1 INST_ARCHLIB 1 INST_SCRIPT 1
MAP_TARGET 1 INST_MAN1DIR 1 INST_MAN3DIR 1 PERL_SRC 1
PERL 1 FULLPERL 1
);
why its written in this clumsy way, I dunno. Maybe at one point there
were different values for each key.
I'd rewrite it like this:
%Prepend_dot_dot = map {($_ => 1)}, qw(INST_BIN INST_EXE ...);
But that's not what makes it interesting. %Prepend_dot_dot is defined
at the end of ExtUtils::MakeMaker->full_setup. Its a global and its
hard-coded. The only place its used is in ExtUtils::MakeMaker->new
(maybe it was used in other placed before). So there's really no more
reason for it to be a global. Yay! One less global.
Finally, if we look at where its used we see:
for $key (keys %Prepend_dot_dot) {
and that's the only reference to it. So... we have awkward code to
make a hash which we then flatten into an array.
In the end, we're left with a simple array declaration.
@Prepend_dot_dot = qw(
INST_BIN INST_EXE INST_LIB INST_ARCHLIB INST_SCRIPT
MAP_TARGET INST_MAN1DIR INST_MAN3DIR PERL_SRC
PERL FULLPERL
);
and a simple foreach loop:
for my $path (@Prepend_dot_dot) {
I'm leaving it global since I haven't quite decided what to do about
breaking up full_setup() and its not a priority.
And MakeMaker is nudged another inch closer to sanity.
PS I'm planning on doing a talk about all this, so I'm sort of using
this list as a running notebook. I'm also hoping other people will
join in the fun and start fixing these anachronisms along with me.
--
Michael G. Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl Quality Assurance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kwalitee Is Job One
I know you get this a lot, but what's an unholy fairy like you doing in a
mosque like this?
