[Module-build-general] Breaking CPAN installs using M::B

[Soren A <per...@wo...>]

Hi, Ken! and All,

Hope you'all are doing good.

OK, Ken, I finally (YAPC::NA::2003 seems a bit of a ways back now,
doesn't it?) got subscribed to your mailing list, and I have an
immediate concern / complaint / observation to air.

Over the last several weeks (but not, unfortunately, within the last
several days), I've installed a lot of modules using CPAN. I've detected
that on my system, packages using Module::Build are broken wrt to
automatic installation via CPAN. They can be installed if, following the
CPAN blow-up, I issue the "look <package-name>" command and go in and do
things manually.

I believe the reason things are failing is that I have settings in my
CPAN/Config.pm that call `perl Makefile.PL verbose'. As the
administrator for this system I have good reasons for invoking the
Makefile.PL this way. I don't know if you are thinking that M::B as it
gets somehow called from that Makefile.PL is already handling this: but
from the immediate (unstudied) vantage point of my recent experience, it
sure looks like it isn't.

And that is a problem. IMHO, M::B and portability scripts which enable
it's use from the traditional MakeMaker-based invocation `perl
makefile.PL', *must* support or at least parse and accept without error,
*all* the things that have been possible to pass as arguments to that
familiar routine. I can't really recommend M::B yet to others after the
amount of extra trouble it's caused me (I had to get the DateTime
modules installed inahurry a few days ago) on account of this remaining
degree of non-compatibility.

Let me know what's up and how I can help.

I've got this setup:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Module::Build                0.19 in
       /usr/local/share/perl/5.6.1/Module/Build.pm (for 5.6.1)

I haven't installed M::B to my 5.8.0 installation yet. I am on Debian
"Woody".

   Best,
     Soren Andersen