Summarizing:
I'm pretty certain that Module::Build->prompt now does the same thing as
ExtUtils::MakeMaker. The exception is that it checks (as it always
has) whether a default was passed via the API when we're not
interactive. The net change is mostly just that the stricture is now
checked after the prompt is printed.
Highlights:
1. check "do we have a default" + _is_unattended() *after* printing the
prompt (this check is required for the "you have no default"
strictures.)
2. _is_unattended() is still going to check eof(STDIN). This makes it
block just as much as readline() would. This means we can't call it
before prompting, but see my previous message for yet another reason
that fileno isn't working. See (1) for why this is no longer a
problem.
3. prompt("foo", undef) is now a valid usage. Is there any reason that
it shouldn't be?
4. Ok, so you want it to behave like rm -i/ftp/grep. Fine. I guess.
I cleaned up the prompt() documentation in API.pod to try to make this
clear. I still don't like it, but can't really argue with history if
yesterday is held to be more important than tomorrow. I would rather
have it behave according to spec than not, so "what's right" will have
to wait.
Since there was such a stink made about eof() being "evil", I think it
deserves an explanation. If somebody really wants to get rid of the
eof check, they would have to redo _readline() to distinguish between a
user hitting Ctrl+D interactively and eof on a scripted input. (Note,
a user hitting Ctrl+D interactively with STDOUT not on the terminal
will trigger the "must have default" strictures, but I don't believe
this is anything new.) As long as we're going to try reading STDIN
anyway, eof isn't a problem so long as we get the prompt out first.
The original issue was simply that we were checking _is_unattended() as
if it had no consequences, so the solution is to "be careful" with it
and never call it before prompting.
Finally, who has some bright ideas about how to reliably test all of
this in a cross-platform manner? Would an alarm in a child process
work on windows?
--Eric
--
"...our schools have been scientifically designed to
prevent overeducation from happening."
--William Troy Harris
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