Friday, July 29, 2011

Request for comment: on Alien::GSL

dagolden asked recently on his blog for suggestions on which libraries should have Alien:: modules. I recently wrote Math::GSLx::ODEIVE2 which needs not only the GSL libraries but the newest (1.15) version, so these things have been on my mind.

I have started mocking up Alien::GSL at my GitHub repository. Take a look and please let me know ANY thoughts.

Here is what I posted on dagolden.com:

Ok so I have been working on an Alien::GSL module. Since the magic is supposed to go in the Makefile.PL, I worry that I use the functionality without any testing first. However it is a simple module so not much testing is needed perhaps (none is written yet). How do people find the workflow? Suggestions are welcome ...

I close by soliciting comment here. Thanks for any thoughts!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am the (co)author of several Alien modules (Alien::Tidyp, Alien::SDL, Alien::IUP, Alien::Box2D)

As for your Alien::GSL idea I have basically 3 hints:

1/ use Module::Build

2/ do not do system wide install, install the libs into so called "share dir" (that will not require root privs)

3/ have a look at http://search.cpan.org/dist/Alien-Tidyp/ which is quite close to what you need in Alien::GSL

--
kmx

Unknown said...

Thanks kmx, I will look at your distributions for some guidance.

I saw in the Alien POD that they recommend Module::Build rather than MakeMaker, but neither they nor you now have said why. Is there some reason to learn a third build system (Extutils::MakeMaker + Dist::Zilla)?

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Module::Build is more handy as you need to do a lot of complex tasks during build phase that is more easily implemented in perl than in Makefile.

Note that in your concept you are doint all that complicated stuff during configure phase (during: perl Makefile.PL) not build phase (during: make) as it should be.

--
kmx