On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 10:36:39AM +0100, Johan Vromans wrote:
> I have some modules that depend on external tools, like ghostscript,
> mplayer, and mencoder.
>
> Alien seems to be developed to handle dependencies on external
> libraries. Could Alien be used for depending on external tools as
> well? Or is there a better alternative?
I've thought about doing that for a couple of tools. I suggest that
Math::Pari's build scripts would be a good place to start, as it already
detects when its libraries are missing and offers to go out to the
intertubes and download/build/install them.
Incidentally, you'll need to be careful with Ghostscript. There are at
least two subtlely incompatible versions. They take slightly different
command line options, and while the raster images they spit out look the
same, they're not byte-for-byte identical. Which broke my tests for
some PostScripty stuff.
--
David Cantrell | London Perl Mongers Deputy Chief Heretic
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-- Shane Lazarus
