[Pdx-pm] Starting from scratch with Module::Build

[Michael G Schwern]

On Sat, Jul 02, 2005 at 03:08:26PM -0700, Marvin Humphrey wrote:
> I'm talking about eyeballing my _own_ distro.  If I see "Module  
> Version Goes Here", I'll remember that I have to edit that text.  If  
> it's not there, there's a chance I'll forget to include a version  
> number.
> 
> It's easy to spot when something is blatantly wrong.
> It's hard to spot when something is missing.

Ahh.  Humans shouldn't do rote tasks, they suck at them.  That sort of
thing is easily automatable IF you don't clutter up your module with
stubs.


> What would you like to see expunged from the module-starter-created  
> template?

Dunno, never used it.


> The thing that seems vestigial to me, at least for pure Perl modules,  
> is the README file.  If dependencies and synopses can be found in the  
> POD, there isn't much point to duplicating that info in a README.

I've long held that duplicating the POD in the README is worthless.  Its
even more worthless now that we have search.cpan.org and you can look
at a module's POD without downloading it.

Long ago I took a stab at writing a useful README generator.  Something that 
said what the module does, is good for and how to install it.  This included 
its dependencies.  Basically it generated a list of module dependencies from
PREREQ_PM along with the minimum Perl version and URLs to find Perl and CPAN.  
It also look for any XS files to see if a C compiler was necessary and 
mentioned that.  It then showed the usual "perl Makefile.PL; ..." mantra 
along with instructions about how to install outside the usual location 
(ie. PREFIX).  Finally it slapped in the NAME, SYNOPSIS and first paragraph
of the DESCRIPTION.

Module::Build has its own create_readme() function but it, I think, simply
copies the docs.


-- 
Michael G Schwern     schwern at pobox.com     http://www.pobox.com/~schwern
You are wicked and wrong to have broken inside and peeked at the
implementation and then relied upon it.
	-- tchrist in <31832.969261130 at chthon>