[Bioperl-l] Bio::Root::Version functionality is in.

[Aaron J Mackey]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Brian Osborne wrote:

> In a module like that would you do "use Bio::Root::RootI" or the more direct
> "use Bio::Root::Version qw($VERSION);"?

Well, that's really two separate questions:

1) Should that module be using Bio::Root::RootI anyway, regardless of
$VERSION issues?

2) use Bio::Root::Version or Bio::Root::RootI depending on answer to #1.

the qw($VERSION) isn't necessary (in fact, it's currently not supported,
but that could be easy to fix: change @EXPORT to @EXPORT_OK in Version.pm,
then use Bio::Root::Version qw($VERSION) in RootI.pm)

There is one case in which the "viral" $VERSION won't exactly work:

use Bio::SeqIO;
use Bio::SeqIO::fasta 1.2;

__END__
Bio::SeqIO::fasta does not define $Bio::SeqIO::fasta::VERSION--version check failed at -e line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted

This doesn't work because RootI only gets compiled once; I'll think about
how to fix this, but we should probably document that if you require a
particular version of BioPerl, then you should declare that need sooner
rather than later (and then only once).

-Aaron