[Module-build-general] ANNOUNCE: Module::Build 0.14 -> CPAN

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

The uploaded file

     Module-Build-0.14.tar.gz

has entered CPAN as

   file: $CPAN/authors/id/K/KW/KWILLIAMS/Module-Build-0.14.tar.gz
   size: 41925 bytes
    md5: 3228c4324100af1cf4a7763e0bbc4324

0.14  Fri Dec 13 14:06:29 AEST 2002

   - Added support for MacPerl (Mac OS version 9 and below), which (as
     far as I know) was never natively supported by MakeMaker.  Still
     lacks support for the 'test' action (because Test::Harness
     requires forking, which MacPerl won't do) and compiling XS/C files
     (because I don't know how to invoke a compiler on MacOS, and one
     may not even be available).  This change is brought to you by
     Michael Schwern and the letter '('.

   - Improved processing of .xs files.  Now we use the new
     ExtUtils::ParseXS module if it's available, otherwise we use
     backticks and write the result to a .c file ourselves.  This
     avoids the need to do cross-platform shell redirection.

   - Make sure all parts of 'Build test' use the not-yet-installed
     version of Module::Build.  This only affects the tests for this
     module, not any of the module code itself.  [Spotted by Schwern]

   - Oopsie - use $Config{ld} instead of $Config{cc} for linking.

   - Added a 'diff' action, which is useful for comparing the details
     of what you're about to install with what is already installed on
     your system.  This uses File::Compare, which is in the core.

   - Fixed a problem on Windows in which the _build/ directory wasn't
     getting deleted during the 'realclean' action, because we had a
     file open in that directory. [Spotted by Michael Schwern]

   - delete_filetree() now always uses File::Path::rmtree(), regardless
     of whether the thing being deleted is a file or a directory.  This
     helps remove things on obscure platforms with strange locking
     rules (or even not so obscure ones like MacOS).  It also now
     reports the number of files or directories deleted (without
     recursing directory contents).

   - rm_previous_build_script() is gone, replaced by calls to
     delete_filetree().

   - 'Build' now chdir()s in a BEGIN block, so the 'use Module::Build'
     statement will work correctly.  Solves a problem on MacOS, where
     the 'Build' script may often be invoked from the wrong working
     directory.  [Fix by Michael Schwern]

   - Internally we now use the multi-argument form of system() to run
     external commands (such as 'diff' or 'cc') whenever possible (and
     whenever we can't avoid system() altogether).  Note that this
     means we have to handle splitting some strings (such as
     $Config{ccflags}) into argument lists like the shell would, which
     is a drag.  However, the alternative would be to handle shell
     quoting of all arguments to commands ourselves, which is an even
     bigger drag across platforms and involves arbitrary filenames and
     so on.

   - To handle the argument splitting mentioned above, a method
     split_like_shell() has been created.  So far it's just doing naive
     processing.  In practice, I've yet to actually see a %Config entry
     that uses quotes & spaces, so the splitting task is usually not
     very error-prone.

   - The 'test' action now takes a 'test_files' parameter, similar to
     the (undocumented) ExtUtils::MakeMaker TEST_FILES argument.  Handy
     during development when fixing bugs.

   - Internally, the rscan_dir() method can now accept a predicate
     function that decides whether a file/directory should be matched.

   - We now issue a warning message when the author hasn't specified a
     license type.



  -Ken