Having thought about this a little more over the last 2 days, I have a suggestion. Following along the lines of Module::Install, a Module::External (or appropriate name), is bundled with the appropriate application, that can check for compilers, libraries and any other application. The onus is then on the author to specify what external software is required, which the Module::External functions can check for. It could also perhaps use Alien (if installed) to attempt to install them, if the user accepts that. This was close to something that was discussed some time ago, but I can find the thread at the moment.
The benefit would be no change to either Module::Build or ExtUtils::MakeMaker, and only a little change to CPANPLUS. The biggest change would be educating authors to use the new module in any non-pure Perl distributions. I still feel this should reference another report name, which would also require changes elsewhere, but it would better reflect the problems that were encountered than a FAIL, UNKNOWN or NA reports would. At least visitors to the cpan-testers site would then know that due to the tester not having the complete environment, the tests could not be run. whether that report is UNGRADED, INCOMPLETE, PENDING or something completely different, depends on having agreement from you guys. Barbie. -- barbie (@missbarbell.co.uk) | Birmingham Perl Mongers user group | http://birmingham.pm.org
