[Module::Build] Re: How to indicate a dependency in my module

[Randy W. S. <Ra...@Th...>]

Randy W. Sims wrote:

> darren chamberlain wrote:
> 
>> * Randy W. Sims <RandyS at ThePierianSpring.org> [2003-11-10 15:49]:
>>
>>> Also, as I noted in the AFS thread the other day, this info should be 
>>> written in META.yml so that cpan-testers can determine 
>>> programatically whether a module should be tested. Info like required 
>>> non-perl packages and libraries, whether the build/test/install 
>>> process is interactive (or scriptable) or automated, and whether it 
>>> runs only on certain OSs or excludes certain OSs.
>>
>>
>>
>> I like this idea; I must have not been paying close enough attention to
>> your other message.  How could it be done, though?  I can see a simple
>> exression -> expected value scheme working for a lot of things (e.g.,
>> "$^0 eq 'MacOS'", or "eval { getpwuid };" ), but how would things like
>> AFS be detectible?
>>
>> (darren)
>>
> 
> I'm making this up as I go, but I'm thinking that META.yml would just 
> contain a list of required packages and possibly the minimum version 
> required. Initially, that should be enough to flag it for cpan-testers. 
> Ideally, there would be a module (Module::Build::Configure) that could 
> try to determine whether those requirements are satisfied for a 
> particular system. This could be done by a which/where like routine to 
> search for binaries, looking for config files, analyzing the install log 
> of package managers like rpm, dpkg, etc.
> 
> In addition for larger packages like Apache there could be, for example 
> an Module::Build::Configure::Apache module that provided other usefull 
> info about that package like paths and other configuration info that 
> might be usefull to module authors.
> 
> Randy.
> 

Thinking more about this, I guess META.yml would need to provide a 
little more info to a configure module. Would something like the 
following work?

# Sequence of $^O values to include/exclude certains OSs
# One of the following as apropriate:
requires_os: *
excludes_os: MSWin32

# extra-perl requirements
# The has_* keys may map to a function call
# with it's values as arguments. If all calls return
# success the requirement is considered to be satisfied.
required_packages:
   - killerapp:
     version: 4.0
     has_program:
       - foo
       - bar
     has_lib:
       - a
       - z
   - libintl:
     version: 2

# One of auto/interactive/scriptable for cpan-testers
# to know how to setup testing
testing_mode: auto