On 3/7/2011 1:34 PM, John M. Gamble wrote: > Well ... this raises a question. Whither Module::Build? > > Is its future simply to be the precursor to Dist::Zilla? Or to be wrapped > up as a Dist::Zilla::Simple?
First, a little background. The makefile created by ExtUtils::MakeMaker contains a number of targets that can be classified into 2 categories. First, there are the ones used by people installing modules from CPAN: primarily "make && make test && make install". We can call this the "installing" role. Second, there are the targets used only by people writing modules, like "make dist", "make manifest", generating META.yml (and now META.json). We can call this the "authoring" role. When Module::Build was conceived as a pure-Perl MakeMaker replacement, it also implemented both roles. But if you think about it, there's no particular reason that the same tool has to fill both roles, and good reasons why there should be a separate tool for each role. A tool implementing the "installing" role has to have minimal requirements, because they'll have to be installed on every system that uses a module that uses that installer. It needs to be able to run on pretty much every system that can run Perl, including systems that only have older versions of Perl. It needs to be as bulletproof as possible, because it'll be used by people who are just starting to learn Perl. An "authoring" tool, on the other hand, will only be used by people who are writing modules. As a result, it can assume a greater familiarity with Perl. It can have heavy prerequisites, like Moose, which makes it easier to implement more complex features, like rewriting POD, version control integration, uploading to CPAN, etc. Dist::Zilla is the first attempt to separate the authoring role from the installing role that's achieved significant traction. As such, it will never replace the "installing" side of MakeMaker or MB. There's been some talk about an "Install::Zilla" to implement the installing role, but AFAIK nobody's started working on that yet. I'd like to see MB work towards separating the two roles internally, with the goal of developing an install-only tool. Here's a possible scenario: Module-Installer would be a new dist containing the "installing" parts of MB. Ideally, you could convert a Build.PL to use Module::Installer by just doing s/Module::Build/Module::Installer/g. Module-Build would become a legacy dist containing the "authoring" parts of MB for backwards compatibility. It would depend on Module::Installer; Module::Build would become just an empty subclass of Module::Installer. If people want to continue developing the authoring side of MB, it could become a third distribution, say Dist-Builder. The reason for a new dist would be to allow it to gain prerequisites without influencing modules that are depending on MB for its installing role. -- Chris Madsen p...@cjmweb.net -------------------- http://www.cjmweb.net --------------------
