NAME

ExtUtils::MakeMaker - create an extension Makefile

SYNOPSIS

use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;

WriteMakefile( ATTRIBUTE => VALUE [, ...] );

which is really

MM->new(\%att)->flush;

DESCRIPTION

This utility is designed to write a Makefile for an extension module from a Makefile.PL. It is based on the Makefile.SH model provided by Andy Dougherty and the perl5-porters.

It splits the task of generating the Makefile into several subroutines that can be individually overridden. Each subroutine returns the text it wishes to have written to the Makefile.

MakeMaker is object oriented. Each directory below the current directory that contains a Makefile.PL. Is treated as a separate object. This makes it possible to write an unlimited number of Makefiles with a single invocation of WriteMakefile().

How To Write A Makefile.PL

The short answer is: Don't.

Always begin with h2xs.
Always begin with h2xs!
ALWAYS BEGIN WITH H2XS!

even if you're not building around a header file, and even if you don't have an XS component.

Run h2xs(1) before you start thinking about writing a module. For so called pm-only modules that consist of *.pm files only, h2xs has the -X switch. This will generate dummy files of all kinds that are useful for the module developer.

The medium answer is:

use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
WriteMakefile( NAME => "Foo::Bar" );

The long answer is the rest of the manpage :-)

Default Makefile Behaviour

The generated Makefile enables the user of the extension to invoke

perl Makefile.PL # optionally "perl Makefile.PL verbose"
make
make test        # optionally set TEST_VERBOSE=1
make install     # See below

The Makefile to be produced may be altered by adding arguments of the form KEY=VALUE. E.g.

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/myperl5

Other interesting targets in the generated Makefile are

make config     # to check if the Makefile is up-to-date
make clean      # delete local temp files (Makefile gets renamed)
make realclean  # delete derived files (including ./blib)
make ci         # check in all the files in the MANIFEST file
make dist       # see below the Distribution Support section

make test

MakeMaker checks for the existence of a file named test.pl in the current directory and if it exists it adds commands to the test target of the generated Makefile that will execute the script with the proper set of perl -I options.

MakeMaker also checks for any files matching glob("t/*.t"). It will add commands to the test target of the generated Makefile that execute all matching files via the Test::Harness module with the -I switches set correctly.

make testdb

A useful variation of the above is the target testdb. It runs the test under the Perl debugger (see perldebug). If the file test.pl exists in the current directory, it is used for the test.

If you want to debug some other testfile, set TEST_FILE variable thusly:

make testdb TEST_FILE=t/mytest.t

By default the debugger is called using -d option to perl. If you want to specify some other option, set TESTDB_SW variable:

make testdb TESTDB_SW=-Dx

make install

make alone puts all relevant files into directories that are named by the macros INST_LIB, INST_ARCHLIB, INST_SCRIPT, INST_MAN1DIR, and INST_MAN3DIR. All these default to something below ./blib if you are not building below the perl source directory. If you are building below the perl source, INST_LIB and INST_ARCHLIB default to ../../lib, and INST_SCRIPT is not defined.

The install target of the generated Makefile copies the files found below each of the INST_* directories to their INSTALL* counterparts. Which counterparts are chosen depends on the setting of INSTALLDIRS according to the following table:

		       	   INSTALLDIRS set to
       	       	        perl   	          site

    INST_ARCHLIB    INSTALLARCHLIB    INSTALLSITEARCH
    INST_LIB        INSTALLPRIVLIB    INSTALLSITELIB
    INST_BIN                  INSTALLBIN
    INST_SCRIPT              INSTALLSCRIPT
    INST_MAN1DIR             INSTALLMAN1DIR
    INST_MAN3DIR             INSTALLMAN3DIR

The INSTALL... macros in turn default to their %Config ($Config{installprivlib}, $Config{installarchlib}, etc.) counterparts.

You can check the values of these variables on your system with

perl '-V:install.*'

And to check the sequence in which the library directories are searched by perl, run

perl -le 'print join $/, @INC'

PREFIX and LIB attribute

PREFIX and LIB can be used to set several INSTALL* attributes in one go. The quickest way to install a module in a non-standard place might be

perl Makefile.PL LIB=~/lib

This will install the module's architecture-independent files into ~/lib, the architecture-dependent files into ~/lib/$archname/auto.

Another way to specify many INSTALL directories with a single parameter is PREFIX.

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=~

This will replace the string specified by $Config{prefix} in all $Config{install*} values.

Note, that in both cases the tilde expansion is done by MakeMaker, not by perl by default, nor by make. Conflicts between parmeters LIB, PREFIX and the various INSTALL* arguments are resolved so that XXX

If the user has superuser privileges, and is not working on AFS (Andrew File System) or relatives, then the defaults for INSTALLPRIVLIB, INSTALLARCHLIB, INSTALLSCRIPT, etc. will be appropriate, and this incantation will be the best:

perl Makefile.PL; make; make test
make install

make install per default writes some documentation of what has been done into the file $(INSTALLARCHLIB)/perllocal.pod. This feature can be bypassed by calling make pure_install.

AFS users

will have to specify the installation directories as these most probably have changed since perl itself has been installed. They will have to do this by calling

    perl Makefile.PL INSTALLSITELIB=/afs/here/today \
	INSTALLSCRIPT=/afs/there/now INSTALLMAN3DIR=/afs/for/manpages
    make

Be careful to repeat this procedure every time you recompile an extension, unless you are sure the AFS installation directories are still valid.

Static Linking of a new Perl Binary

An extension that is built with the above steps is ready to use on systems supporting dynamic loading. On systems that do not support dynamic loading, any newly created extension has to be linked together with the available resources. MakeMaker supports the linking process by creating appropriate targets in the Makefile whenever an extension is built. You can invoke the corresponding section of the makefile with

make perl

That produces a new perl binary in the current directory with all extensions linked in that can be found in INST_ARCHLIB , SITELIBEXP, and PERL_ARCHLIB. To do that, MakeMaker writes a new Makefile, on UNIX, this is called Makefile.aperl (may be system dependent). If you want to force the creation of a new perl, it is recommended, that you delete this Makefile.aperl, so the directories are searched-through for linkable libraries again.

The binary can be installed into the directory where perl normally resides on your machine with

make inst_perl

To produce a perl binary with a different name than perl, either say

perl Makefile.PL MAP_TARGET=myperl
make myperl
make inst_perl

or say

perl Makefile.PL
make myperl MAP_TARGET=myperl
make inst_perl MAP_TARGET=myperl

In any case you will be prompted with the correct invocation of the inst_perl target that installs the new binary into INSTALLBIN.

make inst_perl per default writes some documentation of what has been done into the file $(INSTALLARCHLIB)/perllocal.pod. This can be bypassed by calling make pure_inst_perl.

Warning: the inst_perl: target will most probably overwrite your existing perl binary. Use with care!

Sometimes you might want to build a statically linked perl although your system supports dynamic loading. In this case you may explicitly set the linktype with the invocation of the Makefile.PL or make:

perl Makefile.PL LINKTYPE=static    # recommended

or

make LINKTYPE=static                # works on most systems

Determination of Perl Library and Installation Locations

MakeMaker needs to know, or to guess, where certain things are located. Especially INST_LIB and INST_ARCHLIB (where to put the files during the make(1) run), PERL_LIB and PERL_ARCHLIB (where to read existing modules from), and PERL_INC (header files and libperl*.*).

Extensions may be built either using the contents of the perl source directory tree or from the installed perl library. The recommended way is to build extensions after you have run 'make install' on perl itself. You can do that in any directory on your hard disk that is not below the perl source tree. The support for extensions below the ext directory of the perl distribution is only good for the standard extensions that come with perl.

If an extension is being built below the ext/ directory of the perl source then MakeMaker will set PERL_SRC automatically (e.g., ../..). If PERL_SRC is defined and the extension is recognized as a standard extension, then other variables default to the following:

PERL_INC     = PERL_SRC
PERL_LIB     = PERL_SRC/lib
PERL_ARCHLIB = PERL_SRC/lib
INST_LIB     = PERL_LIB
INST_ARCHLIB = PERL_ARCHLIB

If an extension is being built away from the perl source then MakeMaker will leave PERL_SRC undefined and default to using the installed copy of the perl library. The other variables default to the following:

PERL_INC     = $archlibexp/CORE
PERL_LIB     = $privlibexp
PERL_ARCHLIB = $archlibexp
INST_LIB     = ./blib/lib
INST_ARCHLIB = ./blib/arch

If perl has not yet been installed then PERL_SRC can be defined on the command line as shown in the previous section.

Which architecture dependent directory?

If you don't want to keep the defaults for the INSTALL* macros, MakeMaker helps you to minimize the typing needed: the usual relationship between INSTALLPRIVLIB and INSTALLARCHLIB is determined by Configure at perl compilation time. MakeMaker supports the user who sets INSTALLPRIVLIB. If INSTALLPRIVLIB is set, but INSTALLARCHLIB not, then MakeMaker defaults the latter to be the same subdirectory of INSTALLPRIVLIB as Configure decided for the counterparts in %Config , otherwise it defaults to INSTALLPRIVLIB. The same relationship holds for INSTALLSITELIB and INSTALLSITEARCH.

MakeMaker gives you much more freedom than needed to configure internal variables and get different results. It is worth to mention, that make(1) also lets you configure most of the variables that are used in the Makefile. But in the majority of situations this will not be necessary, and should only be done, if the author of a package recommends it (or you know what you're doing).

Using Attributes and Parameters

The following attributes can be specified as arguments to WriteMakefile() or as NAME=VALUE pairs on the command line:

C

Ref to array of *.c file names. Initialised from a directory scan and the values portion of the XS attribute hash. This is not currently used by MakeMaker but may be handy in Makefile.PLs.

CCFLAGS

String that will be included in the compiler call command line between the arguments INC and OPTIMIZE.

CONFIG

Arrayref. E.g. [qw(archname manext)] defines ARCHNAME & MANEXT from config.sh. MakeMaker will add to CONFIG the following values anyway: ar cc cccdlflags ccdlflags dlext dlsrc ld lddlflags ldflags libc lib_ext obj_ext ranlib sitelibexp sitearchexp so

CONFIGURE

CODE reference. The subroutine should return a hash reference. The hash may contain further attributes, e.g. {LIBS => ...}, that have to be determined by some evaluation method.

DEFINE

Something like "-DHAVE_UNISTD_H"

DIR

Ref to array of subdirectories containing Makefile.PLs e.g. [ 'sdbm' ] in ext/SDBM_File

DISTNAME

Your name for distributing the package (by tar file). This defaults to NAME above.

DL_FUNCS

Hashref of symbol names for routines to be made available as universal symbols. Each key/value pair consists of the package name and an array of routine names in that package. Used only under AIX (export lists) and VMS (linker options) at present. The routine names supplied will be expanded in the same way as XSUB names are expanded by the XS() macro. Defaults to

{"$(NAME)" => ["boot_$(NAME)" ] }

e.g.

{"RPC" => [qw( boot_rpcb rpcb_gettime getnetconfigent )],
 "NetconfigPtr" => [ 'DESTROY'] }

DL_VARS

Array of symbol names for variables to be made available as universal symbols. Used only under AIX (export lists) and VMS (linker options) at present. Defaults to []. (e.g. [ qw( Foo_version Foo_numstreams Foo_tree ) ])

EXCLUDE_EXT

Array of extension names to exclude when doing a static build. This is ignored if INCLUDE_EXT is present. Consult INCLUDE_EXT for more details. (e.g. [ qw( Socket POSIX ) ] )

This attribute may be most useful when specified as a string on the commandline: perl Makefile.PL EXCLUDE_EXT='Socket Safe'

EXE_FILES

Ref to array of executable files. The files will be copied to the INST_SCRIPT directory. Make realclean will delete them from there again.

NO_VC

In general any generated Makefile checks for the current version of MakeMaker and the version the Makefile was built under. If NO_VC is set, the version check is neglected. Do not write this into your Makefile.PL, use it interactively instead.

FIRST_MAKEFILE

The name of the Makefile to be produced. Defaults to the contents of MAKEFILE, but can be overridden. This is used for the second Makefile that will be produced for the MAP_TARGET.

FULLPERL

Perl binary able to run this extension.

H

Ref to array of *.h file names. Similar to C.

IMPORTS

IMPORTS is only used on OS/2.

INC

Include file dirs eg: "-I/usr/5include -I/path/to/inc"

INCLUDE_EXT

Array of extension names to be included when doing a static build. MakeMaker will normally build with all of the installed extensions when doing a static build, and that is usually the desired behavior. If INCLUDE_EXT is present then MakeMaker will build only with those extensions which are explicitly mentioned. (e.g. [ qw( Socket POSIX ) ])

It is not necessary to mention DynaLoader or the current extension when filling in INCLUDE_EXT. If the INCLUDE_EXT is mentioned but is empty then only DynaLoader and the current extension will be included in the build.

This attribute may be most useful when specified as a string on the commandline: perl Makefile.PL INCLUDE_EXT='POSIX Socket Devel::Peek'

INSTALLARCHLIB

Used by 'make install', which copies files from INST_ARCHLIB to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to perl.

INSTALLBIN

Directory to install binary files (e.g. tkperl) into.

INSTALLDIRS

Determines which of the two sets of installation directories to choose: installprivlib and installarchlib versus installsitelib and installsitearch. The first pair is chosen with INSTALLDIRS=perl, the second with INSTALLDIRS=site. Default is site.

INSTALLMAN1DIR

This directory gets the man pages at 'make install' time. Defaults to $Config{installman1dir}.

INSTALLMAN3DIR

This directory gets the man pages at 'make install' time. Defaults to $Config{installman3dir}.

INSTALLPRIVLIB

Used by 'make install', which copies files from INST_LIB to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to perl.

INSTALLSCRIPT

Used by 'make install' which copies files from INST_SCRIPT to this directory.

INSTALLSITELIB

Used by 'make install', which copies files from INST_LIB to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to site (default).

INSTALLSITEARCH

Used by 'make install', which copies files from INST_ARCHLIB to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to site (default).

INST_ARCHLIB

Same as INST_LIB for architecture dependent files.

INST_BIN

Directory to put real binary files during 'make'. These will be copied to INSTALLBIN during 'make install'

INST_EXE

Old name for INST_SCRIPT. Deprecated. Please use INST_SCRIPT if you need to use it.

INST_LIB

Directory where we put library files of this extension while building it.

INST_MAN1DIR

Directory to hold the man pages at 'make' time

INST_MAN3DIR

Directory to hold the man pages at 'make' time

INST_SCRIPT

Directory, where executable files should be installed during 'make'. Defaults to "./blib/bin", just to have a dummy location during testing. make install will copy the files in INST_SCRIPT to INSTALLSCRIPT.

LDFROM

defaults to "$(OBJECT)" and is used in the ld command to specify what files to link/load from (also see dynamic_lib below for how to specify ld flags)

LIBPERL_A

The filename of the perllibrary that will be used together with this extension. Defaults to libperl.a.

LIB

LIB can only be set at perl Makefile.PL time. It has the effect of setting both INSTALLPRIVLIB and INSTALLSITELIB to that value regardless any

LIBS

An anonymous array of alternative library specifications to be searched for (in order) until at least one library is found. E.g.

'LIBS' => ["-lgdbm", "-ldbm -lfoo", "-L/path -ldbm.nfs"]

Mind, that any element of the array contains a complete set of arguments for the ld command. So do not specify

'LIBS' => ["-ltcl", "-ltk", "-lX11"]

See ODBM_File/Makefile.PL for an example, where an array is needed. If you specify a scalar as in

'LIBS' => "-ltcl -ltk -lX11"

MakeMaker will turn it into an array with one element.

LINKTYPE

'static' or 'dynamic' (default unless usedl=undef in config.sh). Should only be used to force static linking (also see linkext below).

MAKEAPERL

Boolean which tells MakeMaker, that it should include the rules to make a perl. This is handled automatically as a switch by MakeMaker. The user normally does not need it.

MAKEFILE

The name of the Makefile to be produced.

MAN1PODS

Hashref of pod-containing files. MakeMaker will default this to all EXE_FILES files that include POD directives. The files listed here will be converted to man pages and installed as was requested at Configure time.

MAN3PODS

Hashref of .pm and .pod files. MakeMaker will default this to all .pod and any .pm files that include POD directives. The files listed here will be converted to man pages and installed as was requested at Configure time.

MAP_TARGET

If it is intended, that a new perl binary be produced, this variable may hold a name for that binary. Defaults to perl

MYEXTLIB

If the extension links to a library that it builds set this to the name of the library (see SDBM_File)

NAME

Perl module name for this extension (DBD::Oracle). This will default to the directory name but should be explicitly defined in the Makefile.PL.

NEEDS_LINKING

MakeMaker will figure out, if an extension contains linkable code anywhere down the directory tree, and will set this variable accordingly, but you can speed it up a very little bit, if you define this boolean variable yourself.

NOECHO

Defaults to @. By setting it to an empty string you can generate a Makefile that echos all commands. Mainly used in debugging MakeMaker itself.

NORECURS

Boolean. Attribute to inhibit descending into subdirectories.

OBJECT

List of object files, defaults to '$(BASEEXT)$(OBJ_EXT)', but can be a long string containing all object files, e.g. "tkpBind.o tkpButton.o tkpCanvas.o"

OPTIMIZE

Defaults to -O. Set it to -g to turn debugging on. The flag is passed to subdirectory makes.

PERL

Perl binary for tasks that can be done by miniperl

PERLMAINCC

The call to the program that is able to compile perlmain.c. Defaults to $(CC).

PERL_ARCHLIB

Same as above for architecture dependent files

PERL_LIB

Directory containing the Perl library to use.

PERL_SRC

Directory containing the Perl source code (use of this should be avoided, it may be undefined)

PERM_RW

Desired Permission for read/writable files. Defaults to 644. See also "perm_rw" in MM_Unix.

PERM_RWX

Desired permission for executable files. Defaults to 755. See also "perm_rwx" in MM_Unix.

PL_FILES

Ref to hash of files to be processed as perl programs. MakeMaker will default to any found *.PL file (except Makefile.PL) being keys and the basename of the file being the value. E.g.

{'foobar.PL' => 'foobar'}

The *.PL files are expected to produce output to the target files themselves.

PM

Hashref of .pm files and *.pl files to be installed. e.g.

{'name_of_file.pm' => '$(INST_LIBDIR)/install_as.pm'}

By default this will include *.pm and *.pl and the files found in the PMLIBDIRS directories. Defining PM in the Makefile.PL will override PMLIBDIRS.

PMLIBDIRS

Ref to array of subdirectories containing library files. Defaults to [ 'lib', $(BASEEXT) ]. The directories will be scanned and any files they contain will be installed in the corresponding location in the library. A libscan() method can be used to alter the behaviour. Defining PM in the Makefile.PL will override PMLIBDIRS.

PREFIX

Can be used to set the three INSTALL* attributes in one go (except for probably INSTALLMAN1DIR, if it is not below PREFIX according to %Config). They will have PREFIX as a common directory node and will branch from that node into lib/, lib/ARCHNAME or whatever Configure decided at the build time of your perl (unless you override one of them, of course).

PREREQ_PM

Hashref: Names of modules that need to be available to run this extension (e.g. Fcntl for SDBM_File) are the keys of the hash and the desired version is the value. If the required version number is 0, we only check if any version is installed already.

SKIP

Arryref. E.g. [qw(name1 name2)] skip (do not write) sections of the Makefile. Caution! Do not use the SKIP attribute for the neglectible speedup. It may seriously damage the resulting Makefile. Only use it, if you really need it.

TYPEMAPS

Ref to array of typemap file names. Use this when the typemaps are in some directory other than the current directory or when they are not named typemap. The last typemap in the list takes precedence. A typemap in the current directory has highest precedence, even if it isn't listed in TYPEMAPS. The default system typemap has lowest precedence.

VERSION

Your version number for distributing the package. This defaults to 0.1.

VERSION_FROM

Instead of specifying the VERSION in the Makefile.PL you can let MakeMaker parse a file to determine the version number. The parsing routine requires that the file named by VERSION_FROM contains one single line to compute the version number. The first line in the file that contains the regular expression

/([\$*])(([\w\:\']*)\bVERSION)\b.*\=/

will be evaluated with eval() and the value of the named variable after the eval() will be assigned to the VERSION attribute of the MakeMaker object. The following lines will be parsed o.k.:

$VERSION = '1.00';
*VERSION = \'1.01';
( $VERSION ) = '$Revision: 1.222 $ ' =~ /\$Revision:\s+([^\s]+)/;
$FOO::VERSION = '1.10';
*FOO::VERSION = \'1.11';

but these will fail:

my $VERSION = '1.01';
local $VERSION = '1.02';
local $FOO::VERSION = '1.30';

The file named in VERSION_FROM is not added as a dependency to Makefile. This is not really correct, but it would be a major pain during development to have to rewrite the Makefile for any smallish change in that file. If you want to make sure that the Makefile contains the correct VERSION macro after any change of the file, you would have to do something like

depend => { Makefile => '$(VERSION_FROM)' }

See attribute depend below.

XS

Hashref of .xs files. MakeMaker will default this. e.g.

{'name_of_file.xs' => 'name_of_file.c'}

The .c files will automatically be included in the list of files deleted by a make clean.

XSOPT

String of options to pass to xsubpp. This might include -C++ or -extern. Do not include typemaps here; the TYPEMAP parameter exists for that purpose.

XSPROTOARG

May be set to an empty string, which is identical to -prototypes, or -noprototypes. See the xsubpp documentation for details. MakeMaker defaults to the empty string.

XS_VERSION

Your version number for the .xs file of this package. This defaults to the value of the VERSION attribute.

Additional lowercase attributes

can be used to pass parameters to the methods which implement that part of the Makefile.

clean

{FILES => "*.xyz foo"}

depend

{ANY_TARGET => ANY_DEPENDECY, ...}

dist

{TARFLAGS => 'cvfF', COMPRESS => 'gzip', SUFFIX => '.gz',
SHAR => 'shar -m', DIST_CP => 'ln', ZIP => '/bin/zip',
ZIPFLAGS => '-rl', DIST_DEFAULT => 'private tardist' }

If you specify COMPRESS, then SUFFIX should also be altered, as it is needed to tell make the target file of the compression. Setting DIST_CP to ln can be useful, if you need to preserve the timestamps on your files. DIST_CP can take the values 'cp', which copies the file, 'ln', which links the file, and 'best' which copies symbolic links and links the rest. Default is 'best'.

dynamic_lib

{ARMAYBE => 'ar', OTHERLDFLAGS => '...', INST_DYNAMIC_DEP => '...'}

installpm

Deprecated as of MakeMaker 5.23. See "pm_to_blib" in ExtUtils::MM_Unix.

linkext

{LINKTYPE => 'static', 'dynamic' or ''}

NB: Extensions that have nothing but *.pm files had to say

{LINKTYPE => ''}

with Pre-5.0 MakeMakers. Since version 5.00 of MakeMaker such a line can be deleted safely. MakeMaker recognizes, when there's nothing to be linked.

macro

{ANY_MACRO => ANY_VALUE, ...}

realclean

{FILES => '$(INST_ARCHAUTODIR)/*.xyz'}

tool_autosplit

{MAXLEN =E<gt> 8}

Overriding MakeMaker Methods

If you cannot achieve the desired Makefile behaviour by specifying attributes you may define private subroutines in the Makefile.PL. Each subroutines returns the text it wishes to have written to the Makefile. To override a section of the Makefile you can either say:

sub MY::c_o { "new literal text" }

or you can edit the default by saying something like:

sub MY::c_o {
    package MY;	# so that "SUPER" works right
    my $inherited = shift->SUPER::c_o(@_);
    $inherited =~ s/old text/new text/;
    $inherited;
}

If you running experiments with embedding perl as a library into other applications, you might find MakeMaker not sufficient. You'd better have a look at ExtUtils::embed which is a collection of utilities for embedding.

If you still need a different solution, try to develop another subroutine, that fits your needs and submit the diffs to perl5-porters@nicoh.com or comp.lang.perl.misc as appropriate.

For a complete description of all MakeMaker methods see ExtUtils::MM_Unix.

Here is a simple example of how to add a new target to the generated Makefile:

    sub MY::postamble {
	'
    $(MYEXTLIB): sdbm/Makefile
	    cd sdbm && $(MAKE) all
    ';
    }

Hintsfile support

MakeMaker.pm uses the architecture specific information from Config.pm. In addition it evaluates architecture specific hints files in a hints/ directory. The hints files are expected to be named like their counterparts in PERL_SRC/hints, but with an .pl file name extension (eg. next_3_2.pl). They are simply evaled by MakeMaker within the WriteMakefile() subroutine, and can be used to execute commands as well as to include special variables. The rules which hintsfile is chosen are the same as in Configure.

The hintsfile is eval()ed immediately after the arguments given to WriteMakefile are stuffed into a hash reference $self but before this reference becomes blessed. So if you want to do the equivalent to override or create an attribute you would say something like

$self->{LIBS} = ['-ldbm -lucb -lc'];

Distribution Support

For authors of extensions MakeMaker provides several Makefile targets. Most of the support comes from the ExtUtils::Manifest module, where additional documentation can be found.

make distcheck

reports which files are below the build directory but not in the MANIFEST file and vice versa. (See ExtUtils::Manifest::fullcheck() for details)

make skipcheck

reports which files are skipped due to the entries in the MANIFEST.SKIP file (See ExtUtils::Manifest::skipcheck() for details)

make distclean

does a realclean first and then the distcheck. Note that this is not needed to build a new distribution as long as you are sure, that the MANIFEST file is ok.

make manifest

rewrites the MANIFEST file, adding all remaining files found (See ExtUtils::Manifest::mkmanifest() for details)

make distdir

Copies all the files that are in the MANIFEST file to a newly created directory with the name $(DISTNAME)-$(VERSION). If that directory exists, it will be removed first.

make disttest

Makes a distdir first, and runs a perl Makefile.PL, a make, and a make test in that directory.

make tardist

First does a distdir. Then a command $(PREOP) which defaults to a null command, followed by $(TOUNIX), which defaults to a null command under UNIX, and will convert files in distribution directory to UNIX format otherwise. Next it runs tar on that directory into a tarfile and deletes the directory. Finishes with a command $(POSTOP) which defaults to a null command.

make dist

Defaults to $(DIST_DEFAULT) which in turn defaults to tardist.

make uutardist

Runs a tardist first and uuencodes the tarfile.

make shdist

First does a distdir. Then a command $(PREOP) which defaults to a null command. Next it runs shar on that directory into a sharfile and deletes the intermediate directory again. Finishes with a command $(POSTOP) which defaults to a null command. Note: For shdist to work properly a shar program that can handle directories is mandatory.

make zipdist

First does a distdir. Then a command $(PREOP) which defaults to a null command. Runs $(ZIP) $(ZIPFLAGS) on that directory into a zipfile. Then deletes that directory. Finishes with a command $(POSTOP) which defaults to a null command.

make ci

Does a $(CI) and a $(RCS_LABEL) on all files in the MANIFEST file.

Customization of the dist targets can be done by specifying a hash reference to the dist attribute of the WriteMakefile call. The following parameters are recognized:

CI           ('ci -u')
COMPRESS     ('gzip --best')
POSTOP       ('@ :')
PREOP        ('@ :')
TO_UNIX      (depends on the system)
RCS_LABEL    ('rcs -q -Nv$(VERSION_SYM):')
SHAR         ('shar')
SUFFIX       ('.gz')
TAR          ('tar')
TARFLAGS     ('cvf')
ZIP          ('zip')
ZIPFLAGS     ('-r')

An example:

WriteMakefile( 'dist' => { COMPRESS=>"bzip2", SUFFIX=>".bz2" })

Disabling an extension

If some events detected in Makefile.PL imply that there is no way to create the Module, but this is a normal state of things, then you can create a Makefile which does nothing, but succeeds on all the "usual" build targets. To do so, use

ExtUtils::MakeMaker::WriteEmptyMakefile();

instead of WriteMakefile().

This may be useful if other modules expect this module to be built OK, as opposed to work OK (say, this system-dependent module builds in a subdirectory of some other distribution, or is listed as a dependency in a CPAN::Bundle, but the functionality is supported by different means on the current architecture).

SEE ALSO

ExtUtils::MM_Unix, ExtUtils::Manifest, ExtUtils::testlib, ExtUtils::Install, ExtUtils::embed

AUTHORS

Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, Andreas König <A.Koenig@franz.ww.TU-Berlin.DE>, Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk>. VMS support by Charles Bailey <bailey@genetics.upenn.edu>. OS/2 support by Ilya Zakharevich <ilya@math.ohio-state.edu>. Contact the makemaker mailing list mailto:makemaker@franz.ww.tu-berlin.de, if you have any questions.

cpanm lib

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install lib