[Module::Build] Re: ExtUtils::MakeMaker or Module::Build

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

On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 07:00  AM, Orton, Yves wrote:
> Frankly until Module::Build works seamlessly by default with plain old 
> CPAN
> I would advance the opinion that it will never replace MakeMaker, and
> potentially in the long run leave the community divided, with those of 
> us
> who can using Module::Build and those of us who cant or need to ensure
> backwards compatibility not.  I personally dont think that the 
> balkanization
> of CPAN is a fair price for the changes that Module::Build brings.


Well, consider that Module::Build has become backward-compatible into 
areas that MakeMaker has never been able to penetrate at all.  MacPerl 
on Mac OS (not OS X), for example.

And because it doesn't have to know obscure facts about operating 
systems that its authors don't even have access to, a single version of 
Module::Build can work on perls from 5.005 up to 5.8.2.


>
> Now if a concerted effort was made to ensure that Module::Build easily
> installed everywhere (as seen with the prerequisites and Win32 build 
> failure
> it does not) and that _every_ distribution produced by Module::Build 
> was
> installable via CPAN.pm then I would feel much more confident about its
> future.

The former is a good goal.  As for the latter, that's really up to the 
author of the distributions, they get to decide how their distributions 
should be installed.  I agree that Module::Build should try to help as 
much as it can, though.

  -Ken