On Saturday 02 August 2008, David E. Wheeler wrote: > On Aug 2, 2008, at 07:17, Shlomi Fish wrote: > > http://xrl.us/bi6n9 (link to svn.berlios.de) is a functional spec > > for a way to > > tag and classify CPAN modules. Those tags and catgories should end > > up in the > > META.yml. However, inserting them by hand by editing the Build.PL > > will be: > > You are aware of the keywords param to new(), right? > > =item keywords > > For describing the distribution using keyword (or "tags") in order to > make CPAN.org indexing and search more efficient and useful. > > See L<http://module-build.sourceforge.net/META-spec-current.html#keywords >
Hmmm... that's interesting. Sounds useful. Is it supported in search.cpan.org/kobesearch yet? Of course, I'd also like to have Freshmeat-like categories: http://freshmeat.net/browse/18/ > >. > > > > 1. Error-prone. > > Why is that? > Because "The only thing that can parse Perl is perl". It would be very hard to write a third-party program that will parse a typical Build.PL syntax and manipulate it along with all the possible edge-cases. For example, in some of my modules I have used a sub-class of Module::Build (which I called Test::Run::Builder) instead, so if I'm looking for Module::Build I won't find it. Similarly, I can name the Module::Build instance in any way I want which will further complicate things. Or I can put some of the parameters in variables, etc. > > 2. Not capabale of being manipulated by an external program - "Only > > perl can > > understand Perl, etc.". > > It looks like M::B does not current put the keywords into the META.yml > file when you run `make distmeta`. It ought to. That's where you > should start your patch, IMHO. Once the're in the META.yml, any YAML- > compliant program can of course read them. Yes, but if I over-ride the paramaters in META.yml, then it will be over-written once I re-run Build.PL. META.yml is entirely at the mercy of Build.PL and should not be edited by hand. I want to allow a program or a human to give parameters to Build.PL so they'll eventually be preserved there. > > > Of course, this is not limited to this issue. I've overheard a > > conversation on > > a #perl where some people said they'd like to have all the (non-code) > > parameters to Module::Build be speicified in a YAML format or so. > > Um, what for? Write a YAML file to be read by M::B to write out > META.yml? Seems silly to me. No, it's not. Build.PL places some other parameters into META.yml, like the individiuals .pm files and their versions, etc. We need a way to input it paraemeters in a way that's not hard-coded in the Build.PL Perl code. > > > So I've been thinking of having a special file or files for this (or > > alternatively possibly re-use the __DATA__ section of the Build.PL) > > in order > > to specify machine-manipulatable parameters to the Build process. > > I find Perl easier to type than YAML. YAML is much more error-prone, > IMO. Yes, but computer programs can more easily read and write YAML. > > > Given enough willingness, I'm willing to volunteer the time to > > implement it in > > the current version of M::B (and possibly EU::MM and M::I). I > > suppose it can > > also be implemented as a user-land wrapper around Module::Build, but > > would > > like to get some input first. > > As a start, all of the keys specified in the META spec should be > written to META.yml. Beyond that, well, just know that the Ant folks > started out just using XML in their build files, but then needed > processing, and so created a Turing-complete XML programming language. > James Duncan Davidson has since told me that if he had to do it again, > Ant build files would just have been written in Python or Ruby or > something, rather than XML. > > So, let's not try to learn that lesson in reverse, eh? > Well, I'm not proposing that we completely do away with Build.PL or even with the parameters given to the Module::Build constructor. I'm just saying that we should give a way for programs to give it arguments as well, without having to parse the Perl and try to make sense of it. So we have the machine+human-manipulatable input and the data and code in the Build.PL as input to Module::Build. Regards, Shlomi Fish ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Original Riddles - http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/ I met a guy in the bar, talked to her and she gave me her phone number.
