Re: [Module::Build] win32 install problem

[Ken W. <ke...@ma...>]

On May 16, 2006, at 11:12 PM, Randy W. Sims wrote:

> Ben Lavender wrote:
>> Archive::Tar isn't there because it's version .23 instead of 1.08 as
>> recommended/required.  I tried installing that, but I managed to get
>> an entirely new and unrelated error, unrelated to this problem or  
>> this
>> mailing list (not my week!).  I made sure to include those pattern
>> match errors because they get spewn out like carrots from a salad
>> shooter throughout all steps of the install and test process.  It's
>> midnight for me and I'll try and bend Archive::Tar to my will  
>> tomorrow
>> and I'll make another run then.
>> For the record, I get this message while installing:
>> * Archive::Tar (0.23) is installed, but we prefer to have 1.08
>> I'm all for the softening of computer language to make it more user
>> friendly, but required is required and prefer is prefer :)
>
> Not sure why the test in t/runthrough.t didn't detect the missing  
> prereq...
>
>   SKIP: {
>     skip( "not sure if we can create a tarball on this platform", 1 )
>       unless $mb->check_installed_status('Archive::Tar', 0) ||
> 	     $mb->isa('Module::Build::Platform::Unix');
>     ...
>   }

I think basically everything is working as designed - the reason we  
"prefer" to have a newer version of Archive::Tar is that older  
versions fail on some platforms, but we don't exactly know which  
ones.  In this case, we tell the user what version we have, what  
version we think we *want* to have, and then we test things out to  
see if it works.

That said, this probably isn't designed very well. =)  For one thing,  
many users never care about the ability to create tarballs, because  
they only want to use M::B to install things, not to create  
distributions.  For another thing, it would be nice if we could just  
identify the version of A::T we require, then list it as a dependency.

Unfortunately, on some platforms *no* version of A::T seems to work  
properly (as far as I'm last aware - I may have fallen behind on the  
issue), and its maintainers haven't been receptive to patches that  
fix it.  Also, on some platforms (Unix, cygwin, etc.) we'll pretty  
much always have /usr/bin/tar around, so we don't really need *any*  
version of A::T.

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure....

  -Ken