On 9/21/07, Michael G Schwern <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Michael G Schwern wrote: > Hmm. I just noticed that I set 'no_index' for the src directory which > contains the SVN:: modules which brings up the interesting question of which > takes precedence, no_index or provides? > > Since provides is explicit, I'd say it should override the more general > no_index.
My understanding is that these serve two different purposes. "provides" indicates what modules are included in the tarball so that tools don't have to unpack the tarball to understand the contents. The specification says it "can be" used to build indexes -- it doesn't say it must be. "no_index" indicates which modules "are not of interest" to an online index (e.g. search.cpan.org). That is much more specific than "provides" so it makes sense that "no_index" takes precedence over "provides". I don't see those as opposites -- and in fact I use them both together for documentation using Pod::WikiDoc. For "pure" documentation files, (e.g. CPAN::Reporter::API), I write documentation in WikiDoc in API.pm. Pod::WikiDoc converts that during "Build dist" to ordinary Pod in API.pod. In this case, "provides" shows API.pm (with its version information), but I add "API.pm" to "no_index". The result is that search.cpan.org indexes only API.pod and it thus shows up in the documentation section on search.cpan.org. David
