At 5:09 PM -0500 9/30/03, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:How do I create a standard Perl module intended for distribution?
Steal. Find a good distribution (say, MARC::Record) and adapt from there.
I never use h2xs any more.
I second that! I would start out this way: download a distribution by a CPAN author who's got a few modules under their belt (say, INGY or ABW or our own PETDANCE) and delete everything but the following:
Changes lib/ (delete its contents) Makefile.PL MANIFEST.SKIP README t/ (delete its contents)
Whip up a dead simple module Foo in lib/Foo.pm, something like this:
package Foo;
use strict;
use vars qw($VERSION);
$VERSION = '0.01';
sub new { bless {}, shift }
sub bar { rand }Whip up a dead simple test in t/bar.t:
use Test::More tests => 5; use_ok( 'Foo' ); my $foo = Foo->new; ok( $foo ); isa_ok( $foo, 'Foo' ); my $rand = $foo->bar; ok( $rand >= 0.0, 'greater than or equal to 0.0' ); ok( $rand < 1.0, 'less than 1.0' );
Just something simple to help you get the right distribution details taken care of without having to deal with your modules themselves (yet).
Hack on MANIFEST.SKIP if you like -- for example, I'm running Mac OS X so I make sure the following line is in there (.DS_Store files have no meaning except on Mac OS X [and darwin generally?]):
\.DS_Store$
Hack on Makefile.PL (just delete anything that doesn't make sense), then do something like this:
% perl Makefile.PL % make manifest % make distcheck % make skipcheck % perl Makefile.PL % make % make test
Once you've got `make' and `make test' running without errors, rewrite Changes and README, move in your modules, etc.
Reading material:
http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html#Part1-Modules:C http://www.cpan.org/modules/04pause.html
Try googling for "my first CPAN module" and see what comes up -- there may be some good advice for new CPAN authors.
at some point
Also, you might want to look into Module::Build -- you can use it instead of, or in addition to, ExtUtils::MakeMaker.
HTH,
Paul.
-- Paul Hoffman :: Taubman Medical Library :: Univ. of Michigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] :: http://www.nkuitse.com/
