[Bioperl-l] "progress": useful changes vs. "shiny new thingie"

[Nathan S. Haigh]

Chris Fields wrote:
>> Chris,
>>
>> So a package like bioperl-ext, normally requiring a C 
>> compiler and make/nmake, now no longer needs make/nmake? I 
>> don't recall this coming up in our discussions...
>>
>> Brian O.
>>     
>
> The makefile setup for bioperl-ext is much more complex than for the others,
> so I don't know how that would be handled using Module::Build.  I tried it
> earlier on before the RCs on Mac OS X and it installed fine, but Inline
> complained when running other tests so I tossed it.  I don't think it ever
> worked under Windows using nmake, unless you're using CygWin/GNU make. 
>
> I believe the Build file must use make/nmake somehow, so there must be a way
> to compile C code included with the distribution.  I just haven't had time
> to invesitgate yet.
>
> Christopher Fields
> Postdoctoral Researcher - Switzer Lab
> Dept. of Biochemistry
> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
>
>  
>
>   

I was under the impression that Module::Build is pure Perl and thus
wouldn't use make/nmake.

This page might help, look under "code" in this section:
http://search.cpan.org/~kwilliams/Module-Build-0.2805/lib/Module/Build.pm#ACTIONS

According to change logs they use ExtUtils::CBuilder to do all compiling
of C code (since version 0.27_01) see:
http://search.cpan.org/src/KWILLIAMS/Module-Build-0.27_03/Changes

HTH
Nathan