Make your CPAN module static installable

Shoichi Kaji

Me

CPAN, github: skaji

Shoichi Kaji

Agenda• Typical CPAN module installation

• Introduce static install

• Why do you adopt static install?

• DEMO

• How to make your CPAN module static installable

• Conclusion

Typical way

• This is a typical CPAN module installation

• Bundled Makefile.PL knows how to configure/build/test/install the CPAN module

• So you don’t need any tools to install CPAN modules; this is good

• CPAN modules can do almost anything in Makefile.PL; this is powerful

wget http://www.cpan.org/.../Module-0.1.tar.gztar xzf Module-0.1.tar.gzcd Module-0.1perl Makefile.PL # or perl Build.PLmakemake testmake install

BTW

• Nowadays, a lot of people use CPAN clients, such as cpanm to install CPAN modules

• If CPAN modules are not "complicated", then CPAN clients easily expect how to configure/build/test/install them

• … do we really need Makefile.PL?

Introduce static install• Now we have the concept static install introduced by

Leon Timmermans (sorry if I am wrong)

• That is, if CPAN modules - are not "complicated"- set x_static_install 1 in their META.jsonthen CPAN clients may configure/build/test/install them in the common way without executing Makefile.PL

• cpanm-menlo and cpm already support static install

Why do you adopt static install?

• Fastwe don’t need to execute Makefile.PL, which makes CPAN module installation much faster

• Simple People can easily expect results (eg: which files are installed and where)

• SafeThere is no place to execute arbitrary code during configure/build/install steps

DEMOhttps://gist.github.com/skaji/

24de4a819ca4a84b2018f5ee996ac52a

How to make your CPAN module static installable

• First, check your CPAN modules are not complicated

• pm files are in lib/

• executable files are in script/ (if any)

• prereqs are declared in META.json statically

• no xs file, no Module_pm.PL file

How to make your CPAN module static installable

• Here I assume you use Minilla

• Modify toml.minil as follows

• Then your module is static install ready 😄

> minil build> grep x_static_install META.json"x_static_install" : 1

name = "Your-Module"module_maker = "ModuleBuildTiny"[Metadata]x_static_install = 1

Conclusion• CPAN ecosystem uses Makefile.PL/Build.PL to install

CPAN modules

• It is powerful, but often overly complicated

• Now we have the concept static install, which is much simpler and faster

• To make CPAN modules static installable, set x_static_install 1 in META.json

• Let’s make CPAN ecosystem simpler 👍

See also

• My blog posthttp://blogs.perl.org/users/shoichi_kaji1/2017/03/make-your-cpan-module-static-installable.html

• The spec of static installhttps://github.com/Perl-Toolchain-Gang/cpan-static

• An implementation of static install in Menlohttps://github.com/miyagawa/cpanminus/pull/467