[Bioperl-l] No more Makefile.PL (MakeMaker -> Module::Build)

[Sendu Bala]

Hi all,

Since I'm seeing inadequacies with the current Makefile.PL scripts we 
have, I'm thinking of converting from ExtUtils::MakeMaker and the 
Makefile.PL scripts to Module::Build Build.PL scripts.

The advantages this will bring would be creation and installation of 
documentation, sane handling of required and optional dependencies, and 
hopefully good META.yml output, for CPAN compatibility wrt version numbers.

I'll be able to use Module::Build::Compat to automatically generate 
Makefile.PL scripts in 'passthrough' style (if an end-user tries to use 
Makefile.PL without having Module::Build installed, it will offer to 
install Module::Build for them) when it comes time to make 
distributions, but Makefile.PL would no longer be in CVS.


One thing I'm not clear on with the current situation is what is 
supposed to happen when the user chooses to install scripts. Where are 
they supposed to get installed to, and where do end-users normally run 
them from and how? How does this compare to expectations from other perl 
module distributions that have installable scripts?


Please comment and discuss, but I'd like to get this done for the 1.5.2 
release so that the CPAN distribution will be happy.