Re: [Module-build-general] Module::Info

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

On Sunday, May 11, 2003, at 01:14  PM, Dominic Mitchell wrote:
> I've just found an interesting problem.  If you don't already have a 
> module installed, then Module::Info can fail when you do "make dist".
>
> For example, I've just found that I don't have Test::XML on my 
> workstation.  This shouldn't be a problem, but when I tried to do 
> "make dist", I got this error message:
>
> Scanning lib/Test/XML/SAX.pm for packages
> B::Module::Info,packages use failed with 2 saying:
> Can't locate Test/XML.pm in @INC (@INC contains: 
> /home/dom/libexec/perl /home/dom/libs 
> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0 
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi 
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl 
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi 
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl .) at 
> /home/dom/work/Test-XML/lib/Test/XML/SAX.pm line 9.
>
> Test::XML::SAX is a module that depends upon Test::XML, both of which 
> are included in my distribution.
>
> I would guess that to fix this, you probably need to include blib/lib 
> and blib/arch in @INC somehow.  However, this would mean that you need 
> to run a build before you make a dist.  I'm not entirely sure that 
> this is the right answer, though...
>
> Just to confirm, I can manually fix the problem by doing:
>
> % perl Build
> % env PERL5LIB="$PWD/blib/arch:$PWD/blib/lib" perl Build dist

Hmm, this is a tough problem that seems to be inherent in the way 
Module::Info scans for packages.  The problem is actually that it 
compiles the module, then walks the parse tree - but during 
compilation, any dependencies need to be available.

If we could tell Module::Info to somehow ignore any missing modules 
from 'use' statements, that might be helpful.  Otherwise I'm not sure 
Module::Info is a completely viable approach, even though it's probably 
"the right way" to do things.

  -Ken