Re: [bug] 6.05 parse_version

[Ken Williams]

On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 03:22  PM, Stas Bekman wrote:

Andreas J. Koenig wrote:

Asking an author to include a $VERSION is a fair request.
$VERSION-less scripts and modules are a major PITA, no matter if it's
for MakeMaker or for somebody else.

Well, usually there is one $VERSION per a collection of several files. But sure this workaround should be OK.

Another workaround would be to disguise the $VERSION line:

     no strict 'vars';
     unless (${'File::Spec::V' .'ERSION'} >= $min_version) {
       ...

Or even better:

     unless (File::Spec->VERSION >= $min_version) {
       ...

In any case. Any reason why the parse_version isn't using eval and avoiding fatal errors? If it fails to get the version, just move on, don't screw the output of CPAN.pm in this particular case. I suppose at least CPAN.pm could wrap this call in eval().

I think that by finding a VERSION MakeMaker has committed to thinking that there's a real VERSION in the file, and then it dies because its commitment was wrong. This is documented - the MakeMaker docs say that the first line matching

/([\$*])(([\w\:\']*)\bVERSION)\b.*\=/

will be treated as a version number. I don't really like it any more than you do, but it's behaving as documented.

-Ken