LPM: Monday's meeting

[Rich Bowen]

Frank Price wrote:
> 
...
> I'll suggest a topic for discussion (on list or at meeting).  I'm
> working on a biggish project that will have files in many different
> places.  I want the installer to be able to decide, at install time,
> where these files will reside.  For instance, you could say "install
> --config=/usr/local/etc --out=/var/httpd/docs/", and the script would
> actually be changed (or the config file, or whatever).
> 
> Realizing that I could write a little script to do this, is there some
> module already written that will handle it?  MakeMaker seems pretty close,
> but I don't see how to customize it for what I want.

I would be very interested in any discussion of using MakeMaker to do
stuff other than its "intended" purpose. I use it to build packages, for
the purpose of versioning (perl Makefile.PL; make; make dist) and I have
a hunch that it can be used for much more convoluted and useful things.
It seems to me that it could indeed be used to do cool custom installs,
because there are modules on CPAN that install things in a number of
places (man pages, the module itself, stuff in /usr/bin) and you can
specify that it install things elsewhere. Yes, this sounds like an
interesting thing to talk about. Unless, of course, we're just pooling
our collective ignorance, in which case it could just be frustrating.

Rich
-- 
Director of Web Application Development  -  The Creative Group
                                 http://www.cre8tivegroup.com/
Author - Apache Server Unleashed - http://apacheunleashed.com/