>>>>> On Wed, 3 Sep 2008 10:57:20 -0700, Eric Wilhelm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>> And IMO this hints at a real problem that was mentioned >> in this thread, but was not really indicted: namely CPAN.pm’s >> logic that if there is no Makefile.PL, it is a sane idea to make >> one up out of whole cloth. I can’t believe anyone would think >> this could ever *ever* work, though Andreas does not strike me as >> the type to put harebrained heuristical magic in code. So I have >> to wonder what the justification for this behaviour might be. Is >> it really necessary or even helpful? > I've been told that it is intended for tarballs made in the times when > there was no such thing as Makefile.PL yet. Ah, history... Not quite. The Makefile.PL was invented long before CPAN evolved. But many early uploaders believed that uploading Foobar.pm is the way to go. Or foobar.pl. And when you ask the CPAN shell to install ANDK/keepcool-0.344 you'll probably be surprised that this *script* installs just fine. % head /home/ftp/pub/PAUSE/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/keepcool-0.344 #!/usr/bin/perl -w =head1 NAME keepcool - throttle a process with STOP und CONT calls And if you read $CPAN/scripts/index.html you might imagine that the mechanism had its merits. I'm not opposed to giving it up, just providing the historical context. > Incidentally, I would love to be able to move forward to the time when > there is neither Build.PL nor Makefile.PL. Hear, hear! :-) -- andreas
