Adam Kennedy wrote:
>> There are a number of ways to do this. The most simple is:
>>
>> use strict;
>> use warnings;
>>
>> use File::HomeDir;
>> my $conf_dir = File::Spec->catdir( File::HomeDir->my_home, '.Foo' );
>
>
> Not that I wish to be a pedant about this, but only so people keep it in
> mind...
>
> This installer will crash with a non-useful error message if someone
> tries to install of < 5.006, and has an implicit undeclared (still
> unresolvable I believe) dependency on File::HomeDir.
How is this different from a Makefile.PL or any other perl script with a
C<use> statement. If the C<use>d module can't be found, it says it can't
be found. It doesn't crash.
Sure, the dependency should be listed in META.yml. And, there is a way
to that so that CPAN.pm and other tools can see the dependency before
running the Build.PL: You simply list it in C<requres> argument to the
constructor. But this was just a simplified example to illustrate a
different point...
> (I'll shut up about the whole implicit undeclared unresolvable
> dependency on Module::Build for a while, given it's now in the core and
> I've had a good long chat about the issue with Tony.)
Again, how is this different from MakeMaker's Makefile.PL which, strange
enough, requires MakeMaker to be present?
> So if you use warnings in your Build.PL you should always do it as
>
> use 5.006;
> use strict;
> use warnings;
I agree, this is true of any script, not just Build.PL.
> As for how to ensure File::HomeDir is installed before you actually know
> what you dependencies are, well I dunno, but this problem is going to
> keep coming back and haunting us till MB supports bundling of some kind.
Bundling is *a* solution to *some* problems *some* of the time. From
what I understand there's a pretty good module out there that helps with
that ;). But I'm not yet convinced that it should be the default method
for every distribution. Authors should have a choice. For people who
want to bundle Module::Build it's simple to do by hand, and it's been
done by authors who decided that was best for their distribution.
Regards,
Randy.
