Re: [Module-build-general] ANNOUNCE: CPAN-MakeMaker-0.10

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

On Sunday, October 27, 2002, at 07:48  PM, Brian Ingerson wrote:
> CPAN/MakeMaker version 0.10
> ===========================
>
> The module ExtUtils::MakeMaker is familiar to everybody. It's on the
> first line of every Makefile.PL of every module distribution on CPAN.

Well, most of them.

Anyway, I do think this is a bit of a step backwards.  I don't really 
like the idea of including CPAN::MakeMaker in every module distributed, 
but that's largely an aesthetic argument against making zillions of 
distributions with the same installation code, and having to deal with 
the associated problems with it.

Also, one of the main reasons I aborted my project to "fix" EU::MM was 
that I became convinced that its OO architecture is bad (upside-down, 
mostly) and unfixable.  I'm concerned that CPAN::MM will be like trying 
to patch a turd.

I don't mean to discourage you from working on it, but these are my 
reservations about its success.


> The good thing about ExtUtils::MakeMaker is that it is powerful,
> featureful, flexible, cross-platform and on virtually every installation
> of Perl 5.

That's also true of the other ExtUtils::* modules, which I happily use 
in Module::Build.

> The bad thing about this legacy workhorse is that the Perl
> community is crippled to significantly improve it. Any features added
> now can only enhance the current release of Perl. Authors would shun new
> features anyway, because their modules could not be used in earlier
> versions of Perl that account for the overwhelming majority of
> installations.

So why not just add new features to ExtUtils::MakeMaker and put that 
in ./ of each module that wants to use the new features?


> CPAN::MakeMaker is a self-distributing module.

After reading your documentation and seeing that it's not viral, I'd 
change the above phrase.  I assumed it was viral when I read this.

  -Ken