2009/9/1 Kartik Thakore <thakore.kar...@gmail.com>: >> One of the things the old build scripts did that the new >> pseudo-cpan-friendly ones do not was it prompted you as to what would be >> built and gave you an option to fix the dependencies. > > Is prompting recommended in CPAN?
In the general case, prompting is forbidden on the CPAN. If your Makefile.PL/Build.PL is capable of making an informed decision on what to do, it should just do what it thinks is best and avoid asking except as a last resort. Most of the time, builds are either part of an automated process, or the user wishes to install module Foo, which will result in the dependency chain Foo -> Bar -> Baz -> SDL. By the time the install process reaches your code, and you ask the question, the user will have no idea how to answer the question. They did not want to install SDL, they wanted to install Frozen Bubble or some other higher level program, and SDL just happened to be installed as part of the recursion. We have this problem all the time in CPAN's crypto modules, which for some reason assume that everyone is a security expert and knows what "Do you want TLA support, or Foo support?" means, when the reality is that almost nobody installs the crypto modules directly. Adam K
