I suppose this'll sound like I'm being picky but when you say this:
On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Paul "LeoNerd" Evans <leon...@leonerd.org.uk
> wrote:
> When the perl-level Alien::libtermkey's Build.PL runs, it is of course
> free to make queries of Alien::unibilium. But what good does this do?
> Alien::libtermkey's next action is to unpack the bundled
> libtermkey.tar.gz and run "make install" on it. A:l cannot communicate
> anything it has learned from A:u into this Makefile, because
> libtermkey's Makefile tries to enquire directly of pkg-config itself.
There is the smallest of windows in which it *can* communicate, and as an
Alien author, you would try to exploit that window as much as possible. If
you use Module::Build, then your build system can set environment variables
that pkg-config listens to, and then when Module::Build calls
system('make'), those changes to environment variables will carry through.
(If you use ExtUtils::MakeMaker, you may have ways for setting environment
variables before the build steps, but I don't know how to do it.)
Furthermore, there is no reason you can't patch the build files after
unpacking them. Is this brittle? Absolutely! But if it works, it may be
better than nothing. The project may attract other users who are willing to
help maintain that brittle but effective solution.
Not fun, but it makes life easier for your users, right?
David
--
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan
