I think we now say "deprecated" but because there are people in your situation, I don't see actually removing it for a while -- like around the time that 5.10 is "standard" and 5.8 is rare.
David On Jan 24, 2010 9:15 AM, "Marvin Humphrey" <mar...@rectangular.com> wrote: On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 08:26:06PM -0800, Eric Wilhelm wrote: > hard place: old client invents Makefile.PL from thin air Probably the fact that we require Perl 5.8.3 or above spares us from some of those. > If you want to encourage these users to upgrade their CPAN.pm and/or fix > their configs, deleting the Makefile.PL may be the best route. It's more the by-hand installers that have been a PITA, of which there are a couple types. There are the simpletons who have learned the "perl Makefile.PL make make test make install" incantation once upon a time, get confused and upset when their routine gets disrupted, and can't be bothered to open a README and follow simple instructions. Then there are people who learned to dislike M::B back when it was more buggy or "didn't support" their favorite EUMM feature (e.g. PREFIX), and who think it's really important to argue with me about switching to EUMM. A passthrough Makefile.PL keeps all of them out of my hair. Since Module::Build has moved to core and become more reliable these conversations end quicker, but I'd still rather not have the conversations at all. > If you're not using any M::B-only features and the "traditional" > Makefile.PL generation works for you, just do that and you won't get > complaints even in 1999. Heh. We've got a 600-line M::B subclass, which makes heavy use of ExtUtils::CBuilder and ExtUtils::ParseXS. It works like a charm, and programming with the tools built by the Module::Build team is fun. A "traditional" Makefile.PL ain't gonna cut it for us. OK, I think we'll keep the passthrough Makefile.PL for now, and thank you all for providing and maintaining the option. Once configure_requires has sufficient market penetration, we'll zap it. Cheers, Marvin Humphrey