[Kc] Perl 'Expert' Quiz-of-the-Week #24 (Module dependency evaluation)

Garrett Goebel garrett at scriptpro.com
Thu Sep 23 08:43:11 CDT 2004


IMPORTANT: Please do not post solutions, hints, or other spoilers
        until at least 60 hours after the date of this message.
        Thanks.

IMPORTANTE: Por favor, no enviis soluciones, pistas, o cualquier otra
        cosa que pueda echar a perder la resolucin del problema hasta
        que hayan pasado por lo menos 60 horas desde el envo de este
        mensaje. Gracias.

WICHTIG: Bitte schicken Sie keine Lsungen, Tipps oder Hinweise fr
        diese Aufgabe vor Ablauf von 60 Stunden nach dem Datum dieser
        Mail. Danke.

BELANGRIJK: Stuur aub geen oplossingen, hints of andere tips in de
        eerste 60 uur na het verzendingstijdstip van dit
        bericht. Waarvoor dank.

Qing3 Zhu4Yi4: Qing3 Ning2 Deng3Dao4 Jie1Dao4 Ben3 Xin4Xi2 Zhi1Hou4 60
        Xiao3Shi2, Zai4 Fa1Biao3 Jie3Da2, Ti2Shi4, Huo4 Qi2Ta1 Hui4
        Xie4Lou4 Da2An4 De5 Jian4Yi4.  Xie4Xie4.

----------------------------------------------------------------

If you've ever written any modules then you are probably familiar with the
concept of requirements or prerequisites. These are dependencies that must
be met in order for your module to work correctly. For example, if your
module uses another module then that module must be present on the user's
system in order for your module to function correctly.

If you've used MakeMaker then you've probably written something like:

     use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;

     WriteMakefile(
         NAME          => 'Your::Module',
         VERSION_FROM  => 'lib/Your/Module.pm',
         PREREQ_PM     => {
             'Test::More' => 0,
             'File::Spec' => 0.82,
         },
     );

or with Module::Build:

     use Module::Build;

     my $build = Module::Build->new(
         module_name => 'Your::Module',
         license => 'perl',
         requires => {
             'File::Spec' => 0.82,
         },
         build_requires => {
             'Test::More' => 0,
         ),
     );

     $build->create_build_script;

Both of the above say tell their respective build tools that File::Spec
version 0.82 or above and any version of Test::More are required.
Module::Build is a little more flexible in that it lets you indicate that a
module is required only during the build phase (build_requires) or that a
module is recommended but not required (recommends). Further, Module::Build
lets you be more specific about versions, using comparison operators. For
example:

     requires => {
         'Some::Module' => '>= 0.7, != 1.0, < 2.0',
     }

Says that a version of Some::Module of 0.7 or greater, excluding version 1.0
and less than version 2.0 is required.

However, even with Module::Build's greater flexibility there are a lot of
requirements that are still not possible to describe. And some modules go to
great lengths to do this dynamically. The problem with this is that it makes
it more difficult for tools like CPAN.pm, CPANPLUS, and some automated tools
to take advantage of without running the Makefile.PL or Build.PL file.
Ideally, it would be nice to specify complex requirements in the now
standard META.yml file, which contains meta data about a distribution in
YAML format (http://yaml.org/). Then we could have a standard module that
can read those requirements and validate them. This module could be used by
Module::Build, ExtUtils::MakeMaker, CPAN.pm, CPANPLUS, and any other tool
that needs to validate requirements.

The types of things we would like to handle in the requirements
specification are boolean expressions && (and), || (or), and ^^ (xor);
grouping with parenthesis; and macro definition and expansion.

An example of boolean expressions (suggested by a discussion with David
Wheeler and Ken Williams on the module-build list) would be:

     requires => q[
         (DBD::Pg && DateTime::Format::Pg)
           ||
         (DBD::mysql && DateTime::Format::mysql)
     ]

This says that we need any version of either of these two sets of modules.
If we need to, we can also include version specifications:

     requires => q[
         ( DBD::Pg > 1.1 && DateTime::Format::Pg )
           ||
         ( DBD::mysql <= 1.2 && DateTime::Format::mysql )
     ]

Note that when a branch of the 'or' expression evaluates to true, it is not
neccessary to evaluate the remaining branches - short-circuit evaluation.
However, all branches of an 'and' or 'xor' expression must be evaluated for
correct error reporting.

Of course we also want to remain compatible as much as possible with the old
specifications.

For the macros, we're mostly interested in the use of predefined macros.
For example:

     requires => q[
         ( Term::Readline::Gnu )
           ||
         ( {OSNAME} == MSWin32 && Term::Readline::Perl )
     ]

(A possible extension would be to add a set operator (in) for versions and
any other values such as '{OSNAME} in [VMS MSWin32]' or 'Some::Module in
[1.0..1.9 !1.7]'.)

Other useful macros might be {MULTITHREADED}, {LARGEFILES}, etc.

Finally, it can be useful to allow definition of macros to simplify
expressions. For Example:

     requires => q[
         def Pg = DBD::Pg && DateTime::Format::Pg;
         def mysql = DBD::mysql && DateTime::Format::mysql;

         {Pg} || {mysql}
     ]

Feel free to experiment with different syntax. The only hard requirements
are that it supports: boolean expressions, grouping, and predefined macros.
For example, my original suggestion to Ken Williams, Module::Build's author,
was something of the form:

     requires => {
         'db_driver'    => q[ {postgresql} || {mysql} ],
         '{postgresql}' => {
             'DBD::Pg'                 => 0,
             'DateTime::Format::Pg'    => 0,
         },
         '{mysql}'      => {
             'DBD::mysql'              => 0,
             'DateTime::Format::mysql' => 0,
         }

This syntax makes parsing a little simpler, but otherwise allows the same
features. The keys with braces around the names are not evaluated; They are
definitions of macros that are only evaluated when they appear in the value
of another key.

This weeks quiz is to write a module (Prereq::Expr) that can take a
specification of the type described above, and evaluate it to determine if
the requirements are satisfied. The specification is the value assigned to
the 'requires' key in the examples above. 
(Prereq::Expr->eval( $dist{requires} )). It can be either a hash, string, or
array, whichever makes more sense. But, it should be able to handle the old
style requirements.

In order to determine the version of an installed module, I've extracted the
routines from Module::Build and put them in a module at:

        http://perl.plover.com/qotw/misc/e024/Versions.pm

Use it like this:

        use Versions;
        my $version = Versions->from_module('File::Spec');

or

        my $version = Versions->from_file('/path/to/module.pm');

To simplify comparisons, you can assume that versions are real numbers and
just compare with perl's built-in numeric comparison operators. For the
purpose of this quiz, it's not necessary to worry about alpha versions and
all the complications of comparing versions. If you are interested, you
might check out John Peacock's version and version::alphabeta modules.

One of the more interesting problems with this quiz, I think, is the problem
of reporting missing requirements. When you can have arbitrarily large sets
of alternative modules, it's not obvious (to me) how best to notify the user
in an orderly and comprehensible way.

I do, of course, have an ulterior motive in this quiz. This form of complex
requirements has been on the Module::Build TODO list for a long time. I'd
like to submit the solutions posted, with the permission of their respective
authors, to Ken Williams for possible inclusion in some form or another in a
future version of Module::Build.

If you want to implement this in a language other than perl, you can simply
replace Versions.pm with a module/class or whatever that simply contains a
list of hardcoded versions or whatever make sense for your language of
choice. The important part is the expression parsing and evaluation.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/kc/attachments/20040923/fd5b21df/attachment.htm


More information about the kc mailing list