| Module::Build - Build and install Perl modules |
Module::Build - Build and install Perl modules
Standard process for building & installing modules:
perl Build.PL ./Build ./Build test ./Build install
Or, if you're on a platform (like DOS or Windows) that doesn't require the ``./'' notation, you can do this:
perl Build.PL Build Build test Build install
Module::Build is a system for building, testing, and installing
Perl modules. It is meant to be an alternative to
ExtUtils::MakeMaker. Developers may alter the behavior of the
module through subclassing. It also does not require a make on your
system - most of the Module::Build code is pure-perl and written in a
very cross-platform way.
See COMPARISON for more comparisons between Module::Build and
other installer tools.
To install Module::Build, and any other module that uses
Module::Build for its installation process, do the following:
perl Build.PL # 'Build.PL' script creates the 'Build' script ./Build # Need ./ to ensure we're using this "Build" script ./Build test # and not another one that happens to be in the PATH ./Build install
This illustrates initial configuration and the running of three 'actions'. In this case the actions run are 'build' (the default action), 'test', and 'install'. Other actions defined so far include:
build manifest clean manifest_skip code manpages config_data pardist diff ppd dist ppmdist distcheck prereq_data distclean prereq_report distdir pure_install distinstall realclean distmeta retest distsign skipcheck disttest test docs testall fakeinstall testcover help testdb html testpod install testpodcoverage installdeps versioninstall
You can run the 'help' action for a complete list of actions.
The documentation for Module::Build is broken up into sections:
Module::Build
scripts at the command line.
Module::Build, and the relevant concepts needed by authors who are
writing Build.PL scripts for a distribution or controlling
Module::Build processes programmatically.
Module::Build API.
There are some general principles at work here. First, each task when building a module is called an ``action''. These actions are listed above; they correspond to the building, testing, installing, packaging, etc., tasks.
Second, arguments are processed in a very systematic way. Arguments
are always key=value pairs. They may be specified at perl Build.PL
time (i.e. perl Build.PL destdir=/my/secret/place), in which case
their values last for the lifetime of the Build script. They may
also be specified when executing a particular action (i.e.
Build test verbose=1), in which case their values last only for the
lifetime of that command. Per-action command line parameters take
precedence over parameters specified at perl Build.PL time.
The build process also relies heavily on the Config.pm module.
If the user wishes to override any of the
values in Config.pm, she may specify them like so:
perl Build.PL --config cc=gcc --config ld=gcc
The following build actions are provided by default.
If you run the Build script without any arguments, it runs the
build action, which in turn runs the code and docs actions.
This is analogous to the MakeMaker make all target.
This action will clean up any files that the build process may have
created, including the blib/ directory (but not including the
_build/ directory and the Build script itself).
This action builds your code base.
By default it just creates a blib/ directory and copies any .pm
and .pod files from your lib/ directory into the blib/
directory. It also compiles any .xs files from lib/ and places
them in blib/. Of course, you need a working C compiler (probably
the same one that built perl itself) for the compilation to work
properly.
The code action also runs any .PL files in your lib/
directory. Typically these create other files, named the same but
without the .PL ending. For example, a file lib/Foo/Bar.pm.PL
could create the file lib/Foo/Bar.pm. The .PL files are
processed first, so any .pm files (or other kinds that we deal
with) will get copied correctly.
...
This action will compare the files about to be installed with their installed counterparts. For .pm and .pod files, a diff will be shown (this currently requires a 'diff' program to be in your PATH). For other files like compiled binary files, we simply report whether they differ.
A flags parameter may be passed to the action, which will be passed
to the 'diff' program. Consult your 'diff' documentation for the
parameters it will accept - a good one is -u:
./Build diff flags=-u
This action is helpful for module authors who want to package up their module for source distribution through a medium like CPAN. It will create a tarball of the files listed in MANIFEST and compress the tarball using GZIP compression.
By default, this action will use the Archive::Tar module. However, you can
force it to use binary ``tar'' and ``gzip'' executables by supplying an explicit
tar (and optional gzip) parameter:
./Build dist --tar C:\path\to\tar.exe --gzip C:\path\to\zip.exe
Reports which files are in the build directory but not in the MANIFEST file, and vice versa. (See manifest for details.)
Performs the 'realclean' action and then the 'distcheck' action.
Creates a ``distribution directory'' named $dist_name-$dist_version
(if that directory already exists, it will be removed first), then
copies all the files listed in the MANIFEST file to that directory.
This directory is what the distribution tarball is created from.
Performs the 'distdir' action, then switches into that directory and runs a
perl Build.PL, followed by the 'build' and 'install' actions in that
directory. Use PERL_MB_OPT or .modulebuildrc to set options that should be
applied during subprocesses
Creates the META.yml file that describes the distribution.
META.yml is a file containing various bits of metadata about the distribution. The metadata includes the distribution name, version, abstract, prerequisites, license, and various other data about the distribution. This file is created as META.yml in a simplified YAML format.
META.yml file must also be listed in MANIFEST - if it's not, a warning will be issued.
The current version of the META.yml specification can be found on CPAN as the CPAN::Meta::Spec manpage.
Uses Module::Signature to create a SIGNATURE file for your
distribution, and adds the SIGNATURE file to the distribution's
MANIFEST.
Performs the 'distdir' action, then switches into that directory and runs a
perl Build.PL, followed by the 'build' and 'test' actions in that directory.
Use PERL_MB_OPT or .modulebuildrc to set options that should be applied
during subprocesses
This will generate documentation (e.g. Unix man pages and HTML
documents) for any installable items under blib/ that
contain POD. If there are no bindoc or libdoc installation
targets defined (as will be the case on systems that don't support
Unix manpages) no action is taken for manpages. If there are no
binhtml or libhtml installation targets defined no action is
taken for HTML documents.
This is just like the install action, but it won't actually do
anything, it will just report what it would have done if you had
actually run the install action.
This action will simply print out a message that is meant to help you use the build process. It will show you a list of available build actions too.
With an optional argument specifying an action name (e.g. Build help
test), the 'help' action will show you any POD documentation it can
find for that action.
This will generate HTML documentation for any binary or library files
under blib/ that contain POD. The HTML documentation will only be
installed if the install paths can be determined from values in
Config.pm. You can also supply or override install paths on the
command line by specifying install_path values for the binhtml
and/or libhtml installation targets.
With an optional html_links argument set to a false value, you can
skip the search for other documentation to link to, because that can
waste a lot of time if there aren't any links to generate anyway:
./Build html --html_links 0
This action will use ExtUtils::Install to install the files from
blib/ into the system. See INSTALL PATHS
for details about how Module::Build determines where to install
things, and how to influence this process.
If you want the installation process to look around in @INC for
other versions of the stuff you're installing and try to delete it,
you can use the uninst parameter, which tells ExtUtils::Install to
do so:
./Build install uninst=1
This can be a good idea, as it helps prevent multiple versions of a module from being present on your system, which can be a confusing situation indeed.
This action will use the cpan_client parameter as a command to install
missing prerequisites. You will be prompted whether to install
optional dependencies.
The cpan_client option defaults to 'cpan' but can be set as an option or in
.modulebuildrc. It must be a shell command that takes a list of modules to
install as arguments (e.g. 'cpanp -i' for CPANPLUS). If the program part is a
relative path (e.g. 'cpan' or 'cpanp'), it will be located relative to the perl
program that executed Build.PL.
/opt/perl/5.8.9/bin/perl Build.PL ./Build installdeps --cpan_client 'cpanp -i' # installs to 5.8.9
This is an action intended for use by module authors, not people installing modules. It will bring the MANIFEST up to date with the files currently present in the distribution. You may use a MANIFEST.SKIP file to exclude certain files or directories from inclusion in the MANIFEST. MANIFEST.SKIP should contain a bunch of regular expressions, one per line. If a file in the distribution directory matches any of the regular expressions, it won't be included in the MANIFEST.
The following is a reasonable MANIFEST.SKIP starting point, you can add your own stuff to it:
^_build ^Build$ ^blib ~$ \.bak$ ^MANIFEST\.SKIP$ CVS
See the distcheck and skipcheck actions if you want to find out
what the manifest action would do, without actually doing anything.
This is an action intended for use by module authors, not people installing modules. It will generate a boilerplate MANIFEST.SKIP file if one does not already exist.
This will generate man pages for any binary or library files under
blib/ that contain POD. The man pages will only be installed if the
install paths can be determined from values in Config.pm. You can
also supply or override install paths by specifying there values on
the command line with the bindoc and libdoc installation
targets.
Generates a PAR binary distribution for use with the PAR manpage or the PAR::Dist manpage.
It requires that the PAR::Dist module (version 0.17 and up) is installed on your system.
Build a PPD file for your distribution.
This action takes an optional argument codebase which is used in
the generated PPD file to specify the (usually relative) URL of the
distribution. By default, this value is the distribution name without
any path information.
Example:
./Build ppd --codebase "MSWin32-x86-multi-thread/Module-Build-0.21.tar.gz"
Generates a PPM binary distribution and a PPD description file. This
action also invokes the ppd action, so it can accept the same
codebase argument described under that action.
This uses the same mechanism as the dist action to tar & zip its
output, so you can supply tar and/or gzip parameters to affect
the result.
This action prints out a Perl data structure of all prerequisites and the versions
required. The output can be loaded again using eval(). This can be useful for
external tools that wish to query a Build script for prerequisites.
This action prints out a list of all prerequisites, the versions required, and the versions actually installed. This can be useful for reviewing the configuration of your system prior to a build, or when compiling data to send for a bug report.
This action is identical to the install action. In the future,
though, when install starts writing to the file
$(INSTALLARCHLIB)/perllocal.pod, pure_install won't, and that
will be the only difference between them.
This action is just like the clean action, but also removes the
_build directory and the Build script. If you run the
realclean action, you are essentially starting over, so you will
have to re-create the Build script again.
This is just like the test action, but doesn't actually build the
distribution first, and doesn't add blib/ to the load path, and
therefore will test against a previously installed version of the
distribution. This can be used to verify that a certain installed
distribution still works, or to see whether newer versions of a
distribution still pass the old regression tests, and so on.
Reports which files are skipped due to the entries in the MANIFEST.SKIP file (See manifest for details)
This will use Test::Harness or TAP::Harness to run any regression
tests and report their results. Tests can be defined in the standard
places: a file called test.pl in the top-level directory, or several
files ending with .t in a t/ directory.
If you want tests to be 'verbose', i.e. show details of test execution
rather than just summary information, pass the argument verbose=1.
If you want to run tests under the perl debugger, pass the argument
debugger=1.
If you want to have Module::Build find test files with different file
name extensions, pass the test_file_exts argument with an array
of extensions, such as [qw( .t .s .z )].
If you want test to be run by TAP::Harness, rather than Test::Harness,
pass the argument tap_harness_args as an array reference of arguments to
pass to the TAP::Harness constructor.
In addition, if a file called visual.pl exists in the top-level
directory, this file will be executed as a Perl script and its output
will be shown to the user. This is a good place to put speed tests or
other tests that don't use the Test::Harness format for output.
To override the choice of tests to run, you may pass a test_files
argument whose value is a whitespace-separated list of test scripts to
run. This is especially useful in development, when you only want to
run a single test to see whether you've squashed a certain bug yet:
./Build test --test_files t/something_failing.t
You may also pass several test_files arguments separately:
./Build test --test_files t/one.t --test_files t/two.t
or use a glob()-style pattern:
./Build test --test_files 't/01-*.t'
[Note: the 'testall' action and the code snippets below are currently in alpha stage, see http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.module.build/2007/03/msg584.html ]
Runs the test action plus each of the test$type actions defined by
the keys of the test_types parameter.
Currently, you need to define the ACTION_test$type method yourself and enumerate them in the test_types parameter.
my $mb = Module::Build->subclass(
code => q(
sub ACTION_testspecial { shift->generic_test(type => 'special'); }
sub ACTION_testauthor { shift->generic_test(type => 'author'); }
)
)->new(
...
test_types => {
special => '.st',
author => ['.at', '.pt' ],
},
...
Runs the test action using Devel::Cover, generating a
code-coverage report showing which parts of the code were actually
exercised during the tests.
To pass options to Devel::Cover, set the $DEVEL_COVER_OPTIONS
environment variable:
DEVEL_COVER_OPTIONS=-ignore,Build ./Build testcover
This is a synonym for the 'test' action with the debugger=1
argument.
This checks all the files described in the docs action and
produces Test::Harness-style output. If you are a module author,
this is useful to run before creating a new release.
This checks the pod coverage of the distribution and
produces Test::Harness-style output. If you are a module author,
this is useful to run before creating a new release.
** Note: since only.pm is so new, and since we just recently added
support for it here too, this feature is to be considered
experimental. **
If you have the only.pm module installed on your system, you can
use this action to install a module into the version-specific library
trees. This means that you can have several versions of the same
module installed and use a specific one like this:
use only MyModule => 0.55;
To override the default installation libraries in only::config,
specify the versionlib parameter when you run the Build.PL script:
perl Build.PL --versionlib /my/version/place/
To override which version the module is installed as, specify the
version parameter when you run the Build.PL script:
perl Build.PL --version 0.50
See the only.pm documentation for more information on
version-specific installs.
The following options can be used during any invocation of Build.PL
or the Build script, during any action. For information on other
options specific to an action, see the documentation for the
respective action.
NOTE: There is some preliminary support for options to use the more
familiar long option style. Most options can be preceded with the
-- long option prefix, and the underscores changed to dashes
(e.g. --use-rcfile). Additionally, the argument to boolean options is
optional, and boolean options can be negated by prefixing them with
no or no- (e.g. --noverbose or --no-verbose).
verbose will
turn off quiet
cpan_client command for use with the installdeps action.
See installdeps for more details.
Build.PL script was
first run). As of 0.3601, a mismatch results in a warning instead of
a fatal error, so this option effectively just suppresses the warning.
[version 0.28]
When Module::Build starts up, it will look first for a file,
$ENV{HOME}/.modulebuildrc. If it's not found there, it will look
in the .modulebuildrc file in the directories referred to by
the environment variables HOMEDRIVE + HOMEDIR, USERPROFILE,
APPDATA, WINDIR, SYS$LOGIN. If the file exists, the options
specified there will be used as defaults, as if they were typed on the
command line. The defaults can be overridden by specifying new values
on the command line.
The action name must come at the beginning of the line, followed by any
amount of whitespace and then the options. Options are given the same
as they would be on the command line. They can be separated by any
amount of whitespace, including newlines, as long there is whitespace at
the beginning of each continued line. Anything following a hash mark (#)
is considered a comment, and is stripped before parsing. If more than
one line begins with the same action name, those lines are merged into
one set of options.
Besides the regular actions, there are two special pseudo-actions: the
key * (asterisk) denotes any global options that should be applied
to all actions, and the key 'Build_PL' specifies options to be applied
when you invoke perl Build.PL.
* verbose=1 # global options
diff flags=-u
install --install_base /home/ken
--install_path html=/home/ken/docs/html
installdeps --cpan_client 'cpanp -i'
If you wish to locate your resource file in a different location, you
can set the environment variable MODULEBUILDRC to the complete
absolute path of the file containing your options.
Specifies an alternate location for a default options file as described above.
Command line options that are applied to Build.PL or any Build action. The string is split as the shell would (e.g. whitespace) and the result is prepended to any actual command-line arguments.
[version 0.19]
When you invoke Module::Build's build action, it needs to figure
out where to install things. The nutshell version of how this works
is that default installation locations are determined from
Config.pm, and they may be overridden by using the install_path
parameter. An install_base parameter lets you specify an
alternative installation root like /home/foo, and a destdir lets
you specify a temporary installation directory like /tmp/install in
case you want to create bundled-up installable packages.
Natively, Module::Build provides default installation locations for the following types of installable items:
script and bin. Usually
generated from the POD in those files. Under Unix, these are manual
pages belonging to the 'man1' category.
lib and arch. This is usually
generated from the POD in .pm files. Under Unix, these are manual
pages belonging to the 'man3' category.
bindoc above, but applies to HTML documents.
libdoc above, but applies to HTML documents.
Four other parameters let you control various aspects of how installation paths are determined:
Config.pm. You can select from three
different sets of default locations by setting the installdirs
parameter as follows:
'installdirs' set to:
core site vendor
uses the following defaults from Config.pm:
lib => installprivlib installsitelib installvendorlib arch => installarchlib installsitearch installvendorarch script => installscript installsitescript installvendorscript bin => installbin installsitebin installvendorbin bindoc => installman1dir installsiteman1dir installvendorman1dir libdoc => installman3dir installsiteman3dir installvendorman3dir binhtml => installhtml1dir installsitehtml1dir installvendorhtml1dir [*] libhtml => installhtml3dir installsitehtml3dir installvendorhtml3dir [*]
* Under some OS (eg. MSWin32) the destination for HTML documents is
determined by the C<Config.pm> entry C<installhtmldir>.
The default value of installdirs is ``site''. If you're creating
vendor distributions of module packages, you may want to do something
like this:
perl Build.PL --installdirs vendor
or
./Build install --installdirs vendor
If you're installing an updated version of a module that was included
with perl itself (i.e. a ``core module''), then you may set
installdirs to ``core'' to overwrite the module in its present
location.
(Note that the 'script' line is different from MakeMaker -
unfortunately there's no such thing as ``installsitescript'' or
``installvendorscript'' entry in Config.pm, so we use the
``installsitebin'' and ``installvendorbin'' entries to at least get the
general location right. In the future, if Config.pm adds some more
appropriate entries, we'll start using those.)
On the command line, that would look like this:
perl Build.PL --install_path lib=/foo/lib --install_path arch=/foo/lib/arch
or this:
./Build install --install_path lib=/foo/lib --install_path arch=/foo/lib/arch
install_base parameter to point to a directory on your system. For
instance, if you set install_base to ``/home/ken'' on a Linux
system, you'll install as follows:
lib => /home/ken/lib/perl5 arch => /home/ken/lib/perl5/i386-linux script => /home/ken/bin bin => /home/ken/bin bindoc => /home/ken/man/man1 libdoc => /home/ken/man/man3 binhtml => /home/ken/html libhtml => /home/ken/html
Note that this is different from how MakeMaker's PREFIX
parameter works. install_base just gives you a default layout under the
directory you specify, which may have little to do with the
installdirs=site layout.
The exact layout under the directory you specify may vary by system - we try to do the ``sensible'' thing on each platform.
rpm or dpkg could create a package from), you can
use the destdir parameter:
perl Build.PL --destdir /tmp/foo
or
./Build install --destdir /tmp/foo
This will effectively install to ``/tmp/foo/$sitelib'',
``/tmp/foo/$sitearch'', and the like, except that it will use
File::Spec to make the pathnames work correctly on whatever
platform you're installing on.
ExtUtils::MakeMaker's PREFIX argument.
prefix should be used when you want Module::Build to install your
modules, documentation, and scripts in the same place as
ExtUtils::MakeMaker's PREFIX mechanism.
The following are equivalent.
perl Build.PL --prefix /tmp/foo
perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/foo
Because of the complex nature of the prefixification logic, the
behavior of PREFIX in MakeMaker has changed subtly over time.
Module::Build's --prefix logic is equivalent to the PREFIX logic found
in ExtUtils::MakeMaker 6.30.
The maintainers of MakeMaker do understand the troubles with the
PREFIX mechanism, and added INSTALL_BASE support in version 6.31 of
MakeMaker, which was released in 2006.
If you don't need to retain compatibility with old versions (pre-6.31) of ExtUtils::MakeMaker or
are starting a fresh Perl installation we recommend you use
install_base instead (and INSTALL_BASE in ExtUtils::MakeMaker).
See Installing in the same location as ExtUtils::MakeMaker in the Module::Build::Cookbook manpage for further information.
A comparison between Module::Build and other CPAN distribution installers.
make and use of a Makefile.
Module::Build does not, nor do other pure-perl installers following the
Build.PL spec such as the Module::Build::Tiny manpage. In practice, this is usually
not an issue for the end user, as make is already required to install most
CPAN modules, even on Windows.
the ExtUtils::MakeMaker manpage has been a core module in every version of Perl 5, and
must maintain compatibility to install the majority of CPAN modules.
Module::Build was added to core in Perl 5.10 and removed from core in Perl
5.20, and (like the ExtUtils::MakeMaker manpage) is only updated to fix critical issues
and maintain compatibility. Module::Build and other non-core installers like
the Module::Build::Tiny manpage are installed from CPAN by declaring themselves as a
configure phase prerequisite, and in this way any installer can be used in
place of the ExtUtils::MakeMaker manpage.
Customizing the build process with the ExtUtils::MakeMaker manpage involves overriding
certain methods that form the Makefile by defining the subs in the MY::
namespace, requiring in-depth knowledge of Makefile, but allowing targeted
customization of the entire build. Customizing Module::Build involves
subclassing Module::Build itself, adding or overriding pure-perl methods
that represent build actions, which are invoked as arguments passed to the
generated ./Build script. This is a simpler concept but requires redefining
the standard build actions to invoke your customizations.
the Module::Build::Tiny manpage does not allow for customization.
Module::Build provides more features and a better experience for distribution
authors than the ExtUtils::MakeMaker manpage. However, tools designed specifically for
authoring, such as the Dist::Zilla manpage and its spinoffs the Dist::Milla manpage and
Minilla, provide these features and more, and generate a configure script
(Makefile.PL/Build.PL) that will use any of the various installers
separately on the end user side. the App::ModuleBuildTiny manpage is an alternative
standalone authoring tool for distributions using the Module::Build::Tiny manpage, which
requires only a simple two-line Build.PL.
The current method of relying on time stamps to determine whether a
derived file is out of date isn't likely to scale well, since it
requires tracing all dependencies backward, it runs into problems on
NFS, and it's just generally flimsy. It would be better to use an MD5
signature or the like, if available. See cons for an example.
- append to perllocal.pod - add a 'plugin' functionality
Ken Williams <kwilliams@cpan.org>
Development questions, bug reports, and patches should be sent to the Module-Build mailing list at <module-build@perl.org>.
Bug reports are also welcome at <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Module-Build>.
The latest development version is available from the Git repository at <https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/Module-Build>
Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Ken Williams. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl(1), the Module::Build::Cookbook manpage, the Module::Build::Authoring manpage, the Module::Build::API manpage, the ExtUtils::MakeMaker manpage
META.yml Specification: the CPAN::Meta::Spec manpage
http://search.cpan.org/dist/PerlBuildSystem/
| Module::Build - Build and install Perl modules |