Ubuntu Manpage: Module::Build - Build and install Perl modules

Provided by: libmodule-build-perl_0.423400-2_all

NAME

       Module::Build - Build and install Perl modules

SYNOPSIS

       Standard process for building & installing modules:

         perl Build.PL
         ./Build
         ./Build test
         ./Build install

       Or, if you're on a platform (like DOS or Windows) that doesn't require the "./" notation, you can do
       this:

         perl Build.PL
         Build
         Build test
         Build install

DESCRIPTION

       "Module::Build" is a system for building, testing, and installing Perl modules.  It is meant to be an
       alternative to "ExtUtils::MakeMaker".  Developers may alter the behavior of the module through
       subclassing.  It also does not require a "make" on your system - most of the "Module::Build" code is
       pure-perl and written in a very cross-platform way.

       See "COMPARISON" for more comparisons between "Module::Build" and other installer tools.

       To install "Module::Build", and any other module that uses "Module::Build" for its installation process,
       do the following:

         perl Build.PL       # 'Build.PL' script creates the 'Build' script
         ./Build             # Need ./ to ensure we're using this "Build" script
         ./Build test        # and not another one that happens to be in the PATH
         ./Build install

       This illustrates initial configuration and the running of three 'actions'.  In this case the actions run
       are 'build' (the default action), 'test', and 'install'.  Other actions defined so far include:

         build                          manifest
         clean                          manifest_skip
         code                           manpages
         config_data                    pardist
         diff                           ppd
         dist                           ppmdist
         distcheck                      prereq_data
         distclean                      prereq_report
         distdir                        pure_install
         distinstall                    realclean
         distmeta                       retest
         distsign                       skipcheck
         disttest                       test
         docs                           testall
         fakeinstall                    testcover
         help                           testdb
         html                           testpod
         install                        testpodcoverage
         installdeps                    versioninstall

       You can run the 'help' action for a complete list of actions.

GUIDE TO DOCUMENTATION

       The documentation for "Module::Build" is broken up into sections:

       General Usage (Module::Build)
           This  is the document you are currently reading. It describes basic usage and background information.
           Its main purpose is to assist the user who wants to learn how to invoke and  control  "Module::Build"
           scripts at the command line.

       Authoring Reference (Module::Build::Authoring)
           This  document describes the structure and organization of "Module::Build", and the relevant concepts
           needed by authors who are writing Build.PL scripts for a distribution or controlling  "Module::Build"
           processes programmatically.

       API Reference (Module::Build::API)
           This is a reference to the "Module::Build" API.

       Cookbook (Module::Build::Cookbook)
           This document demonstrates how to accomplish many common tasks.  It covers general command line usage
           and authoring of Build.PL scripts.  Includes working examples.

ACTIONS

There are some general principles at work here. First, each task when building a module is called an
"action". These actions are listed above; they correspond to the building, testing, installing,
packaging, etc., tasks.

Second, arguments are processed in a very systematic way. Arguments are always key=value pairs. They
may be specified at "perl Build.PL" time (i.e. "perl Build.PL destdir=/my/secret/place"), in which case
their values last for the lifetime of the "Build" script. They may also be specified when executing a
particular action (i.e. "Build test verbose=1"), in which case their values last only for the lifetime
of that command. Per-action command line parameters take precedence over parameters specified at "perl
Build.PL" time.

The build process also relies heavily on the "Config.pm" module. If the user wishes to override any of
the values in "Config.pm", she may specify them like so:

perl Build.PL --config cc=gcc --config ld=gcc

The following build actions are provided by default.

build
[version 0.01]

If you run the "Build" script without any arguments, it runs the "build" action, which in turn runs
the "code" and "docs" actions.

This is analogous to the "MakeMaker" make all target.

clean
[version 0.01]

This action will clean up any files that the build process may have created, including the "blib/"
directory (but not including the "_build/" directory and the "Build" script itself).

code
[version 0.20]

This action builds your code base.

By default it just creates a "blib/" directory and copies any ".pm" and ".pod" files from your "lib/"
directory into the "blib/" directory. It also compiles any ".xs" files from "lib/" and places them
in "blib/". Of course, you need a working C compiler (probably the same one that built perl itself)
for the compilation to work properly.

The "code" action also runs any ".PL" files in your lib/ directory. Typically these create other
files, named the same but without the ".PL" ending. For example, a file lib/Foo/Bar.pm.PL could
create the file lib/Foo/Bar.pm. The ".PL" files are processed first, so any ".pm" files (or other
kinds that we deal with) will get copied correctly.

config_data
[version 0.26]

...

diff
[version 0.14]

This action will compare the files about to be installed with their installed counterparts. For .pm
and .pod files, a diff will be shown (this currently requires a 'diff' program to be in your PATH).
For other files like compiled binary files, we simply report whether they differ.

A "flags" parameter may be passed to the action, which will be passed to the 'diff' program. Consult
your 'diff' documentation for the parameters it will accept - a good one is "-u":

./Build diff flags=-u

dist
[version 0.02]

This action is helpful for module authors who want to package up their module for source distribution
through a medium like CPAN. It will create a tarball of the files listed in MANIFEST and compress
the tarball using GZIP compression.

By default, this action will use the "Archive::Tar" module. However, you can force it to use binary
"tar" and "gzip" executables by supplying an explicit "tar" (and optional "gzip") parameter:

./Build dist --tar C:\path\to\tar.exe --gzip C:\path\to\zip.exe

distcheck
[version 0.05]

Reports which files are in the build directory but not in the MANIFEST file, and vice versa. (See
"manifest" for details.)

distclean
[version 0.05]

Performs the 'realclean' action and then the 'distcheck' action.

distdir
[version 0.05]

Creates a "distribution directory" named "$dist_name-$dist_version" (if that directory already
exists, it will be removed first), then copies all the files listed in the MANIFEST file to that
directory. This directory is what the distribution tarball is created from.

distinstall
[version 0.37]

Performs the 'distdir' action, then switches into that directory and runs a "perl Build.PL", followed
by the 'build' and 'install' actions in that directory. Use PERL_MB_OPT or .modulebuildrc to set
options that should be applied during subprocesses

distmeta
[version 0.21]

Creates the META.yml file that describes the distribution.

META.yml is a file containing various bits of metadata about the distribution. The metadata includes
the distribution name, version, abstract, prerequisites, license, and various other data about the
distribution. This file is created as META.yml in a simplified YAML format.

META.yml file must also be listed in MANIFEST - if it's not, a warning will be issued.

The current version of the META.yml specification can be found on CPAN as CPAN::Meta::Spec.

distsign
[version 0.16]

Uses "Module::Signature" to create a SIGNATURE file for your distribution, and adds the SIGNATURE
file to the distribution's MANIFEST.

disttest
[version 0.05]

Performs the 'distdir' action, then switches into that directory and runs a "perl Build.PL", followed
by the 'build' and 'test' actions in that directory. Use PERL_MB_OPT or .modulebuildrc to set
options that should be applied during subprocesses

docs
[version 0.20]

This will generate documentation (e.g. Unix man pages and HTML documents) for any installable items
under blib/ that contain POD. If there are no "bindoc" or "libdoc" installation targets defined (as
will be the case on systems that don't support Unix manpages) no action is taken for manpages. If
there are no "binhtml" or "libhtml" installation targets defined no action is taken for HTML
documents.

fakeinstall
[version 0.02]

This is just like the "install" action, but it won't actually do anything, it will just report what
it would have done if you had actually run the "install" action.

help
[version 0.03]

This action will simply print out a message that is meant to help you use the build process. It will
show you a list of available build actions too.

With an optional argument specifying an action name (e.g. "Build help test"), the 'help' action will
show you any POD documentation it can find for that action.

html
[version 0.26]

This will generate HTML documentation for any binary or library files under blib/ that contain POD.
The HTML documentation will only be installed if the install paths can be determined from values in
"Config.pm". You can also supply or override install paths on the command line by specifying
"install_path" values for the "binhtml" and/or "libhtml" installation targets.

With an optional "html_links" argument set to a false value, you can skip the search for other
documentation to link to, because that can waste a lot of time if there aren't any links to generate
anyway:

./Build html --html_links 0

install
[version 0.01]

This action will use "ExtUtils::Install" to install the files from "blib/" into the system. See
"INSTALL PATHS" for details about how Module::Build determines where to install things, and how to
influence this process.

If you want the installation process to look around in @INC for other versions of the stuff you're
installing and try to delete it, you can use the "uninst" parameter, which tells "ExtUtils::Install"
to do so:

./Build install uninst=1

This can be a good idea, as it helps prevent multiple versions of a module from being present on your
system, which can be a confusing situation indeed.

installdeps
[version 0.36]

This action will use the "cpan_client" parameter as a command to install missing prerequisites. You
will be prompted whether to install optional dependencies.

The "cpan_client" option defaults to 'cpan' but can be set as an option or in .modulebuildrc. It
must be a shell command that takes a list of modules to install as arguments (e.g. 'cpanp -i' for
CPANPLUS). If the program part is a relative path (e.g. 'cpan' or 'cpanp'), it will be located
relative to the perl program that executed Build.PL.

/opt/perl/5.8.9/bin/perl Build.PL
./Build installdeps --cpan_client 'cpanp -i'
# installs to 5.8.9

manifest
[version 0.05]

This is an action intended for use by module authors, not people installing modules. It will bring
the MANIFEST up to date with the files currently present in the distribution. You may use a
MANIFEST.SKIP file to exclude certain files or directories from inclusion in the MANIFEST.
MANIFEST.SKIP should contain a bunch of regular expressions, one per line. If a file in the
distribution directory matches any of the regular expressions, it won't be included in the MANIFEST.

The following is a reasonable MANIFEST.SKIP starting point, you can add your own stuff to it:

^_build
^Build$
^blib
~$
\.bak$
^MANIFEST\.SKIP$
CVS

See the "distcheck" and "skipcheck" actions if you want to find out what the "manifest" action would
do, without actually doing anything.

manifest_skip
[version 0.3608]

This is an action intended for use by module authors, not people installing modules. It will
generate a boilerplate MANIFEST.SKIP file if one does not already exist.

manpages
[version 0.28]

This will generate man pages for any binary or library files under blib/ that contain POD. The man
pages will only be installed if the install paths can be determined from values in "Config.pm". You
can also supply or override install paths by specifying there values on the command line with the
"bindoc" and "libdoc" installation targets.

pardist
[version 0.2806]

Generates a PAR binary distribution for use with PAR or PAR::Dist.

It requires that the PAR::Dist module (version 0.17 and up) is installed on your system.

ppd [version 0.20]

Build a PPD file for your distribution.

This action takes an optional argument "codebase" which is used in the generated PPD file to specify
the (usually relative) URL of the distribution. By default, this value is the distribution name
without any path information.

Example:

./Build ppd --codebase "MSWin32-x86-multi-thread/Module-Build-0.21.tar.gz"

ppmdist
[version 0.23]

Generates a PPM binary distribution and a PPD description file. This action also invokes the "ppd"
action, so it can accept the same "codebase" argument described under that action.

This uses the same mechanism as the "dist" action to tar & zip its output, so you can supply "tar"
and/or "gzip" parameters to affect the result.

prereq_data
[version 0.32]

This action prints out a Perl data structure of all prerequisites and the versions required. The
output can be loaded again using "eval()". This can be useful for external tools that wish to query
a Build script for prerequisites.

prereq_report
[version 0.28]

This action prints out a list of all prerequisites, the versions required, and the versions actually
installed. This can be useful for reviewing the configuration of your system prior to a build, or
when compiling data to send for a bug report.

pure_install
[version 0.28]

This action is identical to the "install" action. In the future, though, when "install" starts
writing to the file $(INSTALLARCHLIB)/perllocal.pod, "pure_install" won't, and that will be the only
difference between them.

realclean
[version 0.01]

This action is just like the "clean" action, but also removes the "_build" directory and the "Build"
script. If you run the "realclean" action, you are essentially starting over, so you will have to
re-create the "Build" script again.

retest
[version 0.2806]

This is just like the "test" action, but doesn't actually build the distribution first, and doesn't
add blib/ to the load path, and therefore will test against a previously installed version of the
distribution. This can be used to verify that a certain installed distribution still works, or to
see whether newer versions of a distribution still pass the old regression tests, and so on.

skipcheck
[version 0.05]

Reports which files are skipped due to the entries in the MANIFEST.SKIP file (See "manifest" for
details)

test
[version 0.01]

This will use "Test::Harness" or "TAP::Harness" to run any regression tests and report their results.
Tests can be defined in the standard places: a file called "test.pl" in the top-level directory, or
several files ending with ".t" in a "t/" directory.

If you want tests to be 'verbose', i.e. show details of test execution rather than just summary
information, pass the argument "verbose=1".

If you want to run tests under the perl debugger, pass the argument "debugger=1".

If you want to have Module::Build find test files with different file name extensions, pass the
"test_file_exts" argument with an array of extensions, such as "[qw( .t .s .z )]".

If you want test to be run by "TAP::Harness", rather than "Test::Harness", pass the argument
"tap_harness_args" as an array reference of arguments to pass to the TAP::Harness constructor.

In addition, if a file called "visual.pl" exists in the top-level directory, this file will be
executed as a Perl script and its output will be shown to the user. This is a good place to put
speed tests or other tests that don't use the "Test::Harness" format for output.

To override the choice of tests to run, you may pass a "test_files" argument whose value is a
whitespace-separated list of test scripts to run. This is especially useful in development, when you
only want to run a single test to see whether you've squashed a certain bug yet:

./Build test --test_files t/something_failing.t

You may also pass several "test_files" arguments separately:

./Build test --test_files t/one.t --test_files t/two.t

or use a "glob()"-style pattern:

./Build test --test_files 't/01-*.t'

testall
[version 0.2807]

[Note: the 'testall' action and the code snippets below are currently in alpha stage, see
<http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.module.build/2007/03/msg584.html> ]

Runs the "test" action plus each of the "test$type" actions defined by the keys of the "test_types"
parameter.

Currently, you need to define the ACTION_test$type method yourself and enumerate them in the
test_types parameter.

my $mb = Module::Build->subclass(
code => q(
sub ACTION_testspecial { shift->generic_test(type => 'special'); }
sub ACTION_testauthor { shift->generic_test(type => 'author'); }
)
)->new(
...
test_types => {
special => '.st',
author => ['.at', '.pt' ],
},
...

testcover
[version 0.26]

Runs the "test" action using "Devel::Cover", generating a code-coverage report showing which parts of
the code were actually exercised during the tests.

To pass options to "Devel::Cover", set the $DEVEL_COVER_OPTIONS environment variable:

DEVEL_COVER_OPTIONS=-ignore,Build ./Build testcover

testdb
[version 0.05]

This is a synonym for the 'test' action with the "debugger=1" argument.

testpod
[version 0.25]

This checks all the files described in the "docs" action and produces "Test::Harness"-style output.
If you are a module author, this is useful to run before creating a new release.

testpodcoverage
[version 0.28]

This checks the pod coverage of the distribution and produces "Test::Harness"-style output. If you
are a module author, this is useful to run before creating a new release.

versioninstall
[version 0.16]

** Note: since "only.pm" is so new, and since we just recently added support for it here too, this
feature is to be considered experimental. **

If you have the "only.pm" module installed on your system, you can use this action to install a
module into the version-specific library trees. This means that you can have several versions of the
same module installed and "use" a specific one like this:

use only MyModule => 0.55;

To override the default installation libraries in "only::config", specify the "versionlib" parameter
when you run the "Build.PL" script:

perl Build.PL --versionlib /my/version/place/

To override which version the module is installed as, specify the "version" parameter when you run
the "Build.PL" script:

perl Build.PL --version 0.50

See the "only.pm" documentation for more information on version-specific installs.

OPTIONS

Command Line Options
The following options can be used during any invocation of "Build.PL" or the Build script, during any
action. For information on other options specific to an action, see the documentation for the respective
action.

NOTE: There is some preliminary support for options to use the more familiar long option style. Most
options can be preceded with the "--" long option prefix, and the underscores changed to dashes (e.g.
"--use-rcfile"). Additionally, the argument to boolean options is optional, and boolean options can be
negated by prefixing them with "no" or "no-" (e.g. "--noverbose" or "--no-verbose").

quiet
Suppress informative messages on output.

verbose
Display extra information about the Build on output. "verbose" will turn off "quiet"

cpan_client
Sets the "cpan_client" command for use with the "installdeps" action. See "installdeps" for more
details.

use_rcfile
Load the ~/.modulebuildrc option file. This option can be set to false to prevent the custom
resource file from being loaded.

allow_mb_mismatch
Suppresses the check upon startup that the version of Module::Build we're now running under is the
same version that was initially invoked when building the distribution (i.e. when the "Build.PL"
script was first run). As of 0.3601, a mismatch results in a warning instead of a fatal error, so
this option effectively just suppresses the warning.

debug
Prints Module::Build debugging information to STDOUT, such as a trace of executed build actions.

Default Options File (.modulebuildrc)
[version 0.28]

When Module::Build starts up, it will look first for a file, $ENV{HOME}/.modulebuildrc. If it's not
found there, it will look in the .modulebuildrc file in the directories referred to by the environment
variables "HOMEDRIVE" + "HOMEDIR", "USERPROFILE", "APPDATA", "WINDIR", "SYS$LOGIN". If the file exists,
the options specified there will be used as defaults, as if they were typed on the command line. The
defaults can be overridden by specifying new values on the command line.

The action name must come at the beginning of the line, followed by any amount of whitespace and then the
options. Options are given the same as they would be on the command line. They can be separated by any
amount of whitespace, including newlines, as long there is whitespace at the beginning of each continued
line. Anything following a hash mark ("#") is considered a comment, and is stripped before parsing. If
more than one line begins with the same action name, those lines are merged into one set of options.

Besides the regular actions, there are two special pseudo-actions: the key "*" (asterisk) denotes any
global options that should be applied to all actions, and the key 'Build_PL' specifies options to be
applied when you invoke "perl Build.PL".

* verbose=1 # global options
diff flags=-u
install --install_base /home/ken
--install_path html=/home/ken/docs/html
installdeps --cpan_client 'cpanp -i'

If you wish to locate your resource file in a different location, you can set the environment variable
"MODULEBUILDRC" to the complete absolute path of the file containing your options.

Environment variables
MODULEBUILDRC
[version 0.28]

Specifies an alternate location for a default options file as described above.

PERL_MB_OPT
[version 0.36]

Command line options that are applied to Build.PL or any Build action. The string is split as the
shell would (e.g. whitespace) and the result is prepended to any actual command-line arguments.

INSTALL PATHS

[version 0.19]

When you invoke Module::Build's "build" action, it needs to figure out where to install things. The
nutshell version of how this works is that default installation locations are determined from Config.pm,
and they may be overridden by using the "install_path" parameter. An "install_base" parameter lets you
specify an alternative installation root like /home/foo, and a "destdir" lets you specify a temporary
installation directory like /tmp/install in case you want to create bundled-up installable packages.

Natively, Module::Build provides default installation locations for the following types of installable
items:

lib Usually pure-Perl module files ending in .pm.

arch
"Architecture-dependent" module files, usually produced by compiling XS, Inline, or similar code.

script
Programs written in pure Perl. In order to improve reuse, try to make these as small as possible -
put the code into modules whenever possible.

bin "Architecture-dependent" executable programs, i.e. compiled C code or something. Pretty rare to see
this in a perl distribution, but it happens.

bindoc
Documentation for the stuff in "script" and "bin". Usually generated from the POD in those files.
Under Unix, these are manual pages belonging to the 'man1' category.

libdoc
Documentation for the stuff in "lib" and "arch". This is usually generated from the POD in .pm
files. Under Unix, these are manual pages belonging to the 'man3' category.

binhtml
This is the same as "bindoc" above, but applies to HTML documents.

libhtml
This is the same as "libdoc" above, but applies to HTML documents.

Four other parameters let you control various aspects of how installation paths are determined:

installdirs
The default destinations for these installable things come from entries in your system's "Config.pm".
You can select from three different sets of default locations by setting the "installdirs" parameter
as follows:

'installdirs' set to:
core site vendor

uses the following defaults from Config.pm:

lib => installprivlib installsitelib installvendorlib
arch => installarchlib installsitearch installvendorarch
script => installscript installsitescript installvendorscript
bin => installbin installsitebin installvendorbin
bindoc => installman1dir installsiteman1dir installvendorman1dir
libdoc => installman3dir installsiteman3dir installvendorman3dir
binhtml => installhtml1dir installsitehtml1dir installvendorhtml1dir [*]
libhtml => installhtml3dir installsitehtml3dir installvendorhtml3dir [*]

* Under some OS (eg. MSWin32) the destination for HTML documents is
determined by the C<Config.pm> entry C<installhtmldir>.

The default value of "installdirs" is "site". If you're creating vendor distributions of module
packages, you may want to do something like this:

perl Build.PL --installdirs vendor

./Build install --installdirs vendor

If you're installing an updated version of a module that was included with perl itself (i.e. a "core
module"), then you may set "installdirs" to "core" to overwrite the module in its present location.

(Note that the 'script' line is different from "MakeMaker" - unfortunately there's no such thing as
"installsitescript" or "installvendorscript" entry in "Config.pm", so we use the "installsitebin" and
"installvendorbin" entries to at least get the general location right. In the future, if "Config.pm"
adds some more appropriate entries, we'll start using those.)

install_path
Once the defaults have been set, you can override them.

On the command line, that would look like this:

perl Build.PL --install_path lib=/foo/lib --install_path arch=/foo/lib/arch

or this:

./Build install --install_path lib=/foo/lib --install_path arch=/foo/lib/arch

install_base
You can also set the whole bunch of installation paths by supplying the "install_base" parameter to
point to a directory on your system. For instance, if you set "install_base" to "/home/ken" on a
Linux system, you'll install as follows:

lib => /home/ken/lib/perl5
arch => /home/ken/lib/perl5/i386-linux
script => /home/ken/bin
bin => /home/ken/bin
bindoc => /home/ken/man/man1
libdoc => /home/ken/man/man3
binhtml => /home/ken/html
libhtml => /home/ken/html

Note that this is different from how "MakeMaker"'s "PREFIX" parameter works. "install_base" just
gives you a default layout under the directory you specify, which may have little to do with the
"installdirs=site" layout.

The exact layout under the directory you specify may vary by system - we try to do the "sensible"
thing on each platform.

destdir
If you want to install everything into a temporary directory first (for instance, if you want to
create a directory tree that a package manager like "rpm" or "dpkg" could create a package from), you
can use the "destdir" parameter:

perl Build.PL --destdir /tmp/foo

./Build install --destdir /tmp/foo

This will effectively install to "/tmp/foo/$sitelib", "/tmp/foo/$sitearch", and the like, except that
it will use "File::Spec" to make the pathnames work correctly on whatever platform you're installing
on.

prefix
Provided for compatibility with "ExtUtils::MakeMaker"'s PREFIX argument. "prefix" should be used
when you want Module::Build to install your modules, documentation, and scripts in the same place as
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker"'s PREFIX mechanism.

The following are equivalent.

perl Build.PL --prefix /tmp/foo
perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/foo

Because of the complex nature of the prefixification logic, the behavior of PREFIX in "MakeMaker" has
changed subtly over time. Module::Build's --prefix logic is equivalent to the PREFIX logic found in
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker" 6.30.

The maintainers of "MakeMaker" do understand the troubles with the PREFIX mechanism, and added
INSTALL_BASE support in version 6.31 of "MakeMaker", which was released in 2006.

If you don't need to retain compatibility with old versions (pre-6.31) of "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" or
are starting a fresh Perl installation we recommend you use "install_base" instead (and
"INSTALL_BASE" in "ExtUtils::MakeMaker"). See "Installing in the same location as
ExtUtils::MakeMaker" in Module::Build::Cookbook for further information.

COMPARISON

A comparison between "Module::Build" and other CPAN distribution installers.

• ExtUtils::MakeMaker requires "make" and use of a Makefile. "Module::Build" does not, nor do other
pure-perl installers following the Build.PL spec such as Module::Build::Tiny. In practice, this is
usually not an issue for the end user, as "make" is already required to install most CPAN modules,
even on Windows.

• ExtUtils::MakeMaker has been a core module in every version of Perl 5, and must maintain
compatibility to install the majority of CPAN modules. "Module::Build" was added to core in Perl
5.10 and removed from core in Perl 5.20, and (like ExtUtils::MakeMaker) is only updated to fix
critical issues and maintain compatibility. "Module::Build" and other non-core installers like
Module::Build::Tiny are installed from CPAN by declaring themselves as a "configure" phase
prerequisite, and in this way any installer can be used in place of ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

• Customizing the build process with ExtUtils::MakeMaker involves overriding certain methods that form
the Makefile by defining the subs in the "MY::" namespace, requiring in-depth knowledge of Makefile,
but allowing targeted customization of the entire build. Customizing "Module::Build" involves
subclassing "Module::Build" itself, adding or overriding pure-perl methods that represent build
actions, which are invoked as arguments passed to the generated "./Build" script. This is a simpler
concept but requires redefining the standard build actions to invoke your customizations.
Module::Build::Tiny does not allow for customization.

• "Module::Build" provides more features and a better experience for distribution authors than
ExtUtils::MakeMaker. However, tools designed specifically for authoring, such as Dist::Zilla and its
spinoffs Dist::Milla and Minilla, provide these features and more, and generate a configure script
(Makefile.PL/Build.PL) that will use any of the various installers separately on the end user side.
App::ModuleBuildTiny is an alternative standalone authoring tool for distributions using
Module::Build::Tiny, which requires only a simple two-line Build.PL.

TO DO

       The  current  method  of  relying on time stamps to determine whether a derived file is out of date isn't
       likely to scale well, since it requires tracing all dependencies backward, it runs into problems on  NFS,
       and  it's  just  generally flimsy.  It would be better to use an MD5 signature or the like, if available.
       See "cons" for an example.

        - append to perllocal.pod
        - add a 'plugin' functionality

AUTHOR

       Ken Williams <kwilliams@cpan.org>

       Development questions, bug reports, and patches should be  sent  to  the  Module-Build  mailing  list  at
       <module-build@perl.org>.

       Bug reports are also welcome at <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Module-Build>.

       The     latest     development     version     is     available    from    the    Git    repository    at
       <https://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/Module-Build>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 2001-2006 Ken Williams.  All rights reserved.

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under  the  same  terms  as  Perl
       itself.