ExtUtils::MakeMakePre(r3l)Programmers

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ExtUtils::MakeMaker - create an extension Makefile

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use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;

WriteMakefile( ATTRIBUTE => VALUE [, ...] );

which is really

MM->new(\%att)->flush;

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This utility is designed to write a Makefile for an
extension module from a Makefile.PL. It is based on the
Makefile.SH model provided by Andy Dougherty and the
perl5-porters.

It splits the task of generating the Makefile into several
subroutines that can be individually overridden. Each
subroutine returns the text it wishes to have written to
the Makefile.

MakeMaker is object oriented. Each directory below the
current directory that contains a Makefile.PL. Is treated
as a separate object. This makes it possible to write an
unlimited number of Makefiles with a single invocation of
WriteMakefile().

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The short answer is: Don't.
Always begin with h2xs.
Always begin with h2xs!
ALWAYS BEGIN WITH H2XS!

even if you're not building around a header file, and even
if you don't have an XS component.

Run h2xs(1) before you start thinking about writing a
module. For so called pm-only modules that consist of *.pm
files only, h2xs has the -X switch. This will generate
dummy files of all kinds that are useful for the module
developer.

The medium answer is:

use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
WriteMakefile( NAME => "Foo::Bar" );

The long answer is the rest of the manpage :-)

DDeeffaauulltt MMaakkeeffiillee BBeehhaavviioouurr

The generated Makefile enables the user of the extension
to invoke

perl Makefile.PL # optionally "perl Makefile.PL verbose"
make
make test # optionally set TEST_VERBOSE=1
make install # See below

The Makefile to be produced may be altered by adding
arguments of the form KEY=VALUE. E.g.

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/myperl5

Other interesting targets in the generated Makefile are

make config # to check if the Makefile is up-to-date
make clean # delete local temp files (Makefile gets renamed)
make realclean # delete derived files (including ./blib)
make ci # check in all the files in the MANIFEST file
make dist # see below the Distribution Support section

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MakeMaker checks for the existence of a file named test.pl
in the current directory and if it exists it adds commands
to the test target of the generated Makefile that will
execute the script with the proper set of perl -I options.

MakeMaker also checks for any files matching
glob("t/*.t"). It will add commands to the test target of
the generated Makefile that execute all matching files via
the the Test::Harness manpage module with the -I switches
set correctly.

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A useful variation of the above is the target testdb. It
runs the test under the Perl debugger (see the perldebug
manpage). If the file test.pl exists in the current
directory, it is used for the test.

If you want to debug some other testfile, set TEST_FILE
variable thusly:

make testdb TEST_FILE=t/mytest.t

By default the debugger is called using -d option to perl.
If you want to specify some other option, set TESTDB_SW
variable:

make testdb TESTDB_SW=-Dx

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make alone puts all relevant files into directories that
are named by the macros INST_LIB, INST_ARCHLIB,
INST_SCRIPT, INST_MAN1DIR, and INST_MAN3DIR. All these
default to something below ./blib if you are not building
below the perl source directory. If you are building below
the perl source, INST_LIB and INST_ARCHLIB default to
../../lib, and INST_SCRIPT is not defined.

The install target of the generated Makefile copies the
files found below each of the INST_* directories to their
INSTALL* counterparts. Which counterparts are chosen
depends on the setting of INSTALLDIRS according to the
following table:
INSTALLDIRS set to
perl site

INST_ARCHLIB INSTALLARCHLIB INSTALLSITEARCH
INST_LIB INSTALLPRIVLIB INSTALLSITELIB
INST_BIN INSTALLBIN
INST_SCRIPT INSTALLSCRIPT
INST_MAN1DIR INSTALLMAN1DIR
INST_MAN3DIR INSTALLMAN3DIR

The INSTALL... macros in turn default to their %Config
($Config{installprivlib}, $Config{installarchlib}, etc.)
counterparts.

You can check the values of these variables on your system
with

perl '-V:install.*'

And to check the sequence in which the library directories
are searched by perl, run

perl -le 'print join $/, @INC'

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PREFIX and LIB can be used to set several INSTALL*
attributes in one go. The quickest way to install a module
in a non-standard place might be

perl Makefile.PL LIB=~/lib

This will install the module's architecture-independent
files into ~/lib, the architecture-dependent files into
~/lib/$archname/auto.

Another way to specify many INSTALL directories with a

single parameter is PREFIX.

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=~

This will replace the string specified by $Config{prefix}
in all $Config{install*} values.

Note, that in both cases the tilde expansion is done by
MakeMaker, not by perl by default, nor by make. Conflicts
between parmeters LIB, PREFIX and the various INSTALL*
arguments are resolved so that XXX

If the user has superuser privileges, and is not working
on AFS (Andrew File System) or relatives, then the
defaults for INSTALLPRIVLIB, INSTALLARCHLIB,
INSTALLSCRIPT, etc. will be appropriate, and this
incantation will be the best:

perl Makefile.PL; make; make test
make install

make install per default writes some documentation of what
has been done into the file
$(INSTALLARCHLIB)/perllocal.pod. This feature can be
bypassed by calling make pure_install.

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will have to specify the installation directories as these
most probably have changed since perl itself has been
installed. They will have to do this by calling

perl Makefile.PL INSTALLSITELIB=/afs/here/today \
INSTALLSCRIPT=/afs/there/now INSTALLMAN3DIR=/afs/for/manpages
make

Be careful to repeat this procedure every time you
recompile an extension, unless you are sure the AFS
installation directories are still valid.

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An extension that is built with the above steps is ready
to use on systems supporting dynamic loading. On systems
that do not support dynamic loading, any newly created
extension has to be linked together with the available
resources. MakeMaker supports the linking process by
creating appropriate targets in the Makefile whenever an
extension is built. You can invoke the corresponding
section of the makefile with

make perl

That produces a new perl binary in the current directory

with all extensions linked in that can be found in
INST_ARCHLIB , SITELIBEXP, and PERL_ARCHLIB. To do that,
MakeMaker writes a new Makefile, on UNIX, this is called
Makefile.aperl (may be system dependent). If you want to
force the creation of a new perl, it is recommended, that
you delete this Makefile.aperl, so the directories are
searched-through for linkable libraries again.

The binary can be installed into the directory where perl
normally resides on your machine with

make inst_perl

To produce a perl binary with a different name than perl,
either say

perl Makefile.PL MAP_TARGET=myperl
make myperl
make inst_perl

or say

perl Makefile.PL
make myperl MAP_TARGET=myperl
make inst_perl MAP_TARGET=myperl

In any case you will be prompted with the correct
invocation of the inst_perl target that installs the new
binary into INSTALLBIN.

make inst_perl per default writes some documentation of
what has been done into the file
$(INSTALLARCHLIB)/perllocal.pod. This can be bypassed by
calling make pure_inst_perl.

Warning: the inst_perl: target will most probably
overwrite your existing perl binary. Use with care!

Sometimes you might want to build a statically linked perl
although your system supports dynamic loading. In this
case you may explicitly set the linktype with the
invocation of the Makefile.PL or make:

perl Makefile.PL LINKTYPE=static # recommended

make LINKTYPE=static # works on most systems

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MakeMaker needs to know, or to guess, where certain things
are located. Especially INST_LIB and INST_ARCHLIB (where

to put the files during the make(1) run), PERL_LIB and
PERL_ARCHLIB (where to read existing modules from), and
PERL_INC (header files and libperl*.*).

Extensions may be built either using the contents of the
perl source directory tree or from the installed perl
library. The recommended way is to build extensions after
you have run 'make install' on perl itself. You can do
that in any directory on your hard disk that is not below
the perl source tree. The support for extensions below the
ext directory of the perl distribution is only good for
the standard extensions that come with perl.

If an extension is being built below the ext/ directory of
the perl source then MakeMaker will set PERL_SRC
automatically (e.g., ../..). If PERL_SRC is defined and
the extension is recognized as a standard extension, then
other variables default to the following:

PERL_INC = PERL_SRC
PERL_LIB = PERL_SRC/lib
PERL_ARCHLIB = PERL_SRC/lib
INST_LIB = PERL_LIB
INST_ARCHLIB = PERL_ARCHLIB

If an extension is being built away from the perl source
then MakeMaker will leave PERL_SRC undefined and default
to using the installed copy of the perl library. The other
variables default to the following:

PERL_INC = $archlibexp/CORE
PERL_LIB = $privlibexp
PERL_ARCHLIB = $archlibexp
INST_LIB = ./blib/lib
INST_ARCHLIB = ./blib/arch

If perl has not yet been installed then PERL_SRC can be
defined on the command line as shown in the previous
section.

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If you don't want to keep the defaults for the INSTALL*
macros, MakeMaker helps you to minimize the typing needed:
the usual relationship between INSTALLPRIVLIB and
INSTALLARCHLIB is determined by Configure at perl
compilation time. MakeMaker supports the user who sets
INSTALLPRIVLIB. If INSTALLPRIVLIB is set, but
INSTALLARCHLIB not, then MakeMaker defaults the latter to
be the same subdirectory of INSTALLPRIVLIB as Configure
decided for the counterparts in %Config , otherwise it
defaults to INSTALLPRIVLIB. The same relationship holds
for INSTALLSITELIB and INSTALLSITEARCH.

MakeMaker gives you much more freedom than needed to
configure internal variables and get different results. It
is worth to mention, that make(1) also lets you configure
most of the variables that are used in the Makefile. But
in the majority of situations this will not be necessary,
and should only be done, if the author of a package
recommends it (or you know what you're doing).

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The following attributes can be specified as arguments to
WriteMakefile() or as NAME=VALUE pairs on the command
line:

C Ref to array of *.c file names. Initialised from a
directory scan and the values portion of the XS
attribute hash. This is not currently used by MakeMaker
but may be handy in Makefile.PLs.

CCFLAGS
String that will be included in the compiler call
command line between the arguments INC and OPTIMIZE.

CONFIG
Arrayref. E.g. [qw(archname manext)] defines ARCHNAME &
MANEXT from config.sh. MakeMaker will add to CONFIG the
following values anyway: ar cc cccdlflags ccdlflags
dlext dlsrc ld lddlflags ldflags libc lib_ext obj_ext
ranlib sitelibexp sitearchexp so

CONFIGURE
CODE reference. The subroutine should return a hash
reference. The hash may contain further attributes, e.g.
{LIBS => ...}, that have to be determined by some
evaluation method.

DEFINE
Something like "-DHAVE_UNISTD_H"

DIR
Ref to array of subdirectories containing Makefile.PLs
e.g. [ 'sdbm' ] in ext/SDBM_File

DISTNAME
Your name for distributing the package (by tar file).
This defaults to NAME above.

DL_FUNCS
Hashref of symbol names for routines to be made
available as universal symbols. Each key/value pair
consists of the package name and an array of routine
names in that package. Used only under AIX (export
lists) and VMS (linker options) at present. The routine
names supplied will be expanded in the same way as XSUB

names are expanded by the XS() macro. Defaults to

{"$(NAME)" => ["boot_$(NAME)" ] }

e.g.

{"RPC" => [qw( boot_rpcb rpcb_gettime getnetconfigent )],
"NetconfigPtr" => [ 'DESTROY'] }

DL_VARS
Array of symbol names for variables to be made available
as universal symbols. Used only under AIX (export
lists) and VMS (linker options) at present. Defaults to
[]. (e.g. [ qw( Foo_version Foo_numstreams Foo_tree )
])

EXCLUDE_EXT
Array of extension names to exclude when doing a static
build. This is ignored if INCLUDE_EXT is present.
Consult INCLUDE_EXT for more details. (e.g. [ qw(
Socket POSIX ) ] )

This attribute may be most useful when specified as a
string on the commandline: perl Makefile.PL
EXCLUDE_EXT='Socket Safe'

EXE_FILES
Ref to array of executable files. The files will be
copied to the INST_SCRIPT directory. Make realclean will
delete them from there again.

NO_VC
In general any generated Makefile checks for the current
version of MakeMaker and the version the Makefile was
built under. If NO_VC is set, the version check is
neglected. Do not write this into your Makefile.PL, use
it interactively instead.

FIRST_MAKEFILE
The name of the Makefile to be produced. Defaults to the
contents of MAKEFILE, but can be overridden. This is
used for the second Makefile that will be produced for
the MAP_TARGET.

FULLPERL
Perl binary able to run this extension.

H Ref to array of *.h file names. Similar to C.

IMPORTS
IMPORTS is only used on OS/2.

INC
Include file dirs eg: "-I/usr/5include -I/path/to/inc"

INCLUDE_EXT
Array of extension names to be included when doing a
static build. MakeMaker will normally build with all of
the installed extensions when doing a static build, and
that is usually the desired behavior. If INCLUDE_EXT is
present then MakeMaker will build only with those
extensions which are explicitly mentioned. (e.g. [ qw(
Socket POSIX ) ])

It is not necessary to mention DynaLoader or the current
extension when filling in INCLUDE_EXT. If the
INCLUDE_EXT is mentioned but is empty then only
DynaLoader and the current extension will be included in
the build.

This attribute may be most useful when specified as a
string on the commandline: perl Makefile.PL
INCLUDE_EXT='POSIX Socket Devel::Peek'

INSTALLARCHLIB
Used by 'make install', which copies files from
INST_ARCHLIB to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to
perl.

INSTALLBIN
Directory to install binary files (e.g. tkperl) into.

INSTALLDIRS
Determines which of the two sets of installation
directories to choose: installprivlib and installarchlib
versus installsitelib and installsitearch. The first
pair is chosen with INSTALLDIRS=perl, the second with
INSTALLDIRS=site. Default is site.

INSTALLMAN1DIR
This directory gets the man pages at 'make install'
time. Defaults to $Config{installman1dir}.

INSTALLMAN3DIR
This directory gets the man pages at 'make install'
time. Defaults to $Config{installman3dir}.

INSTALLPRIVLIB
Used by 'make install', which copies files from INST_LIB
to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to perl.

INSTALLSCRIPT
Used by 'make install' which copies files from
INST_SCRIPT to this directory.

INSTALLSITELIB
Used by 'make install', which copies files from INST_LIB
to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to site
(default).

INSTALLSITEARCH
Used by 'make install', which copies files from
INST_ARCHLIB to this directory if INSTALLDIRS is set to
site (default).

INST_ARCHLIB
Same as INST_LIB for architecture dependent files.

INST_BIN
Directory to put real binary files during 'make'. These
will be copied to INSTALLBIN during 'make install'

INST_EXE
Old name for INST_SCRIPT. Deprecated. Please use
INST_SCRIPT if you need to use it.

INST_LIB
Directory where we put library files of this extension
while building it.

INST_MAN1DIR
Directory to hold the man pages at 'make' time

INST_MAN3DIR
Directory to hold the man pages at 'make' time

INST_SCRIPT
Directory, where executable files should be installed
during 'make'. Defaults to "./blib/bin", just to have a
dummy location during testing. make install will copy
the files in INST_SCRIPT to INSTALLSCRIPT.

LDFROM
defaults to "$(OBJECT)" and is used in the ld command to
specify what files to link/load from (also see
dynamic_lib below for how to specify ld flags)

LIBPERL_A
The filename of the perllibrary that will be used
together with this extension. Defaults to libperl.a.

LIB
LIB can only be set at perl Makefile.PL time. It has the
effect of setting both INSTALLPRIVLIB and INSTALLSITELIB
to that value regardless any

LIBS
An anonymous array of alternative library specifications
to be searched for (in order) until at least one library

is found. E.g.

'LIBS' => ["-lgdbm", "-ldbm -lfoo", "-L/path -ldbm.nfs"]

Mind, that any element of the array contains a complete
set of arguments for the ld command. So do not specify

'LIBS' => ["-ltcl", "-ltk", "-lX11"]

See ODBM_File/Makefile.PL for an example, where an array
is needed. If you specify a scalar as in

'LIBS' => "-ltcl -ltk -lX11"

MakeMaker will turn it into an array with one element.

LINKTYPE
'static' or 'dynamic' (default unless usedl=undef in
config.sh). Should only be used to force static linking
(also see linkext below).

MAKEAPERL
Boolean which tells MakeMaker, that it should include
the rules to make a perl. This is handled automatically
as a switch by MakeMaker. The user normally does not
need it.

MAKEFILE
The name of the Makefile to be produced.

MAN1PODS
Hashref of pod-containing files. MakeMaker will default
this to all EXE_FILES files that include POD directives.
The files listed here will be converted to man pages and
installed as was requested at Configure time.

MAN3PODS
Hashref of .pm and .pod files. MakeMaker will default
this to all
.pod and any .pm files that include POD directives. The
files listed here will be converted to man pages and
installed as was requested at Configure time.

MAP_TARGET
If it is intended, that a new perl binary be produced,
this variable may hold a name for that binary. Defaults
to perl

MYEXTLIB
If the extension links to a library that it builds set
this to the name of the library (see SDBM_File)

NAME
Perl module name for this extension (DBD::Oracle). This

will default to the directory name but should be
explicitly defined in the Makefile.PL.

NEEDS_LINKING
MakeMaker will figure out, if an extension contains
linkable code anywhere down the directory tree, and will
set this variable accordingly, but you can speed it up a
very little bit, if you define this boolean variable
yourself.

NOECHO
Defaults to @. By setting it to an empty string you can
generate a Makefile that echos all commands. Mainly used
in debugging MakeMaker itself.

NORECURS
Boolean. Attribute to inhibit descending into
subdirectories.

OBJECT
List of object files, defaults to
'$(BASEEXT)$(OBJ_EXT)', but can be a long string
containing all object files, e.g. "tkpBind.o tkpButton.o
tkpCanvas.o"

OPTIMIZE
Defaults to -O. Set it to -g to turn debugging on. The
flag is passed to subdirectory makes.

PERL
Perl binary for tasks that can be done by miniperl

PERLMAINCC
The call to the program that is able to compile
perlmain.c. Defaults to $(CC).

PERL_ARCHLIB
Same as above for architecture dependent files

PERL_LIB
Directory containing the Perl library to use.

PERL_SRC
Directory containing the Perl source code (use of this
should be avoided, it may be undefined)

PL_FILES
Ref to hash of files to be processed as perl programs.
MakeMaker will default to any found *.PL file (except
Makefile.PL) being keys and the basename of the file
being the value. E.g.

{'foobar.PL' => 'foobar'}

The *.PL files are expected to produce output to the
target files themselves.

PM
Hashref of .pm files and *.pl files to be installed.
e.g.

{'name_of_file.pm' => '$(INST_LIBDIR)/install_as.pm'}

By default this will include *.pm and *.pl. If a lib
directory exists and is not listed in DIR (above) then
any *.pm and *.pl files it contains will also be
included by default. Defining PM in the Makefile.PL
will override PMLIBDIRS.

PMLIBDIRS
Ref to array of subdirectories containing library files.
Defaults to [ 'lib', $(BASEEXT) ]. The directories will
be scanned and any files they contain will be installed
in the corresponding location in the library. A
libscan() method can be used to alter the behaviour.
Defining PM in the Makefile.PL will override PMLIBDIRS.

PREFIX
Can be used to set the three INSTALL* attributes in one
go (except for probably INSTALLMAN1DIR, if it is not
below PREFIX according to %Config). They will have
PREFIX as a common directory node and will branch from
that node into lib/, lib/ARCHNAME or whatever Configure
decided at the build time of your perl (unless you
override one of them, of course).

PREREQ_PM
Hashref: Names of modules that need to be available to
run this extension (e.g. Fcntl for SDBM_File) are the
keys of the hash and the desired version is the value.
If the required version number is 0, we only check if
any version is installed already.

SKIP
Arryref. E.g. [qw(name1 name2)] skip (do not write)
sections of the Makefile. Caution! Do not use the SKIP
attribute for the neglectible speedup. It may seriously
damage the resulting Makefile. Only use it, if you
really need it.

TYPEMAPS
Ref to array of typemap file names. Use this when the
typemaps are in some directory other than the current
directory or when they are not named ttyyppeemmaapp. The last
typemap in the list takes precedence. A typemap in the
current directory has highest precedence, even if it
isn't listed in TYPEMAPS. The default system typemap
has lowest precedence.

VERSION
Your version number for distributing the package. This
defaults to 0.1.

VERSION_FROM
Instead of specifying the VERSION in the Makefile.PL you
can let MakeMaker parse a file to determine the version
number. The parsing routine requires that the file named
by VERSION_FROM contains one single line to compute the
version number. The first line in the file that contains
the regular expression

/([\$*])(([\w\:\']*)\bVERSION)\b.*\=/

will be evaluated with eval() and the value of the named
variable aafftteerr the eval() will be assigned to the
VERSION attribute of the MakeMaker object. The following
lines will be parsed o.k.:

$VERSION = '1.00';
*VERSION = \'1.01';
( $VERSION ) = '$Revision: 1.216 $ ' =~ /\$Revision:\s+([^\s]+)/;
$FOO::VERSION = '1.10';
*FOO::VERSION = \'1.11';

but these will fail:

my $VERSION = '1.01';
local $VERSION = '1.02';
local $FOO::VERSION = '1.30';

The file named in VERSION_FROM is not added as a
dependency to Makefile. This is not really correct, but
it would be a major pain during development to have to
rewrite the Makefile for any smallish change in that
file. If you want to make sure that the Makefile
contains the correct VERSION macro after any change of
the file, you would have to do something like

depend => { Makefile => '$(VERSION_FROM)' }

See attribute depend below.

XS
Hashref of .xs files. MakeMaker will default this. e.g.

{'name_of_file.xs' => 'name_of_file.c'}

The .c files will automatically be included in the list
of files deleted by a make clean.

XSOPT
String of options to pass to xsubpp. This might include
-C++ or -extern. Do not include typemaps here; the

TYPEMAP parameter exists for that purpose.

XSPROTOARG
May be set to an empty string, which is identical to
-prototypes, or -noprototypes. See the xsubpp
documentation for details. MakeMaker defaults to the
empty string.

XS_VERSION
Your version number for the .xs file of this package.
This defaults to the value of the VERSION attribute.

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can be used to pass parameters to the methods which
implement that part of the Makefile.

clean

{FILES => "*.xyz foo"}

depend

{ANY_TARGET => ANY_DEPENDECY, ...}

dist

{TARFLAGS => 'cvfF', COMPRESS => 'gzip', SUFFIX => 'gz',
SHAR => 'shar -m', DIST_CP => 'ln', ZIP => '/bin/zip',
ZIPFLAGS => '-rl', DIST_DEFAULT => 'private tardist' }

If you specify COMPRESS, then SUFFIX should also be
altered, as it is needed to tell make the target file of
the compression. Setting DIST_CP to ln can be useful, if
you need to preserve the timestamps on your files.
DIST_CP can take the values 'cp', which copies the file,
'ln', which links the file, and 'best' which copies
symbolic links and links the rest. Default is 'best'.

dynamic_lib

{ARMAYBE => 'ar', OTHERLDFLAGS => '...', INST_DYNAMIC_DEP => '...'}

installpm
Deprecated as of MakeMaker 5.23. See the pm_to_blib
entry in the ExtUtils::MM_Unix manpage.

linkext

{LINKTYPE => 'static', 'dynamic' or ''}

NB: Extensions that have nothing but *.pm files had to
say

{LINKTYPE => ''}

with Pre-5.0 MakeMakers. Since version 5.00 of MakeMaker
such a line can be deleted safely. MakeMaker recognizes,
when there's nothing to be linked.

macro

{ANY_MACRO => ANY_VALUE, ...}

realclean

{FILES => '$(INST_ARCHAUTODIR)/*.xyz'}

tool_autosplit

{MAXLEN =E<gt> 8}

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If you cannot achieve the desired Makefile behaviour by
specifying attributes you may define private subroutines
in the Makefile.PL. Each subroutines returns the text it
wishes to have written to the Makefile. To override a
section of the Makefile you can either say:
sub MY::c_o { "new literal text" }

or you can edit the default by saying something like:
sub MY::c_o {
package MY; # so that "SUPER" works right
my $inherited = shift->SUPER::c_o(@_);
$inherited =~ s/old text/new text/;
$inherited;
}

If you running experiments with embedding perl as a
library into other applications, you might find MakeMaker
not sufficient. You'd better have a look at
ExtUtils::embed which is a collection of utilities for
embedding.

If you still need a different solution, try to develop
another subroutine, that fits your needs and submit the
diffs to perl5-porters@nicoh.com or comp.lang.perl.misc as
appropriate.

For a complete description of all MakeMaker methods see
the ExtUtils::MM_Unix manpage.

Here is a simple example of how to add a new target to the
generated Makefile:

sub MY::postamble {
'
$(MYEXTLIB): sdbm/Makefile
cd sdbm && $(MAKE) all
';
}

HHiinnttssffiillee ssuuppppoorrtt

MakeMaker.pm uses the architecture specific information
from Config.pm. In addition it evaluates architecture
specific hints files in a hints/ directory. The hints
files are expected to be named like their counterparts in
PERL_SRC/hints, but with an .pl file name extension (eg.
next_3_2.pl). They are simply evaled by MakeMaker within
the WriteMakefile() subroutine, and can be used to execute
commands as well as to include special variables. The
rules which hintsfile is chosen are the same as in
Configure.

The hintsfile is eval()ed immediately after the arguments
given to WriteMakefile are stuffed into a hash reference
$self but before this reference becomes blessed. So if you
want to do the equivalent to override or create an
attribute you would say something like

$self->{LIBS} = ['-ldbm -lucb -lc'];

DDiissttrriibbuuttiioonn SSuuppppoorrtt

For authors of extensions MakeMaker provides several
Makefile targets. Most of the support comes from the
ExtUtils::Manifest module, where additional documentation
can be found.

make distcheck
reports which files are below the build directory but
not in the MANIFEST file and vice versa. (See
ExtUtils::Manifest::fullcheck() for details)

make skipcheck
reports which files are skipped due to the entries in
the MANIFEST.SKIP file (See
ExtUtils::Manifest::skipcheck() for details)

make distclean
does a realclean first and then the distcheck. Note
that this is not needed to build a new distribution as
long as you are sure, that the MANIFEST file is ok.

make manifest
rewrites the MANIFEST file, adding all remaining files
found (See ExtUtils::Manifest::mkmanifest() for
details)

make distdir
Copies all the files that are in the MANIFEST file to
a newly created directory with the name
$(DISTNAME)-$(VERSION). If that directory exists, it
will be removed first.

make disttest
Makes a distdir first, and runs a perl Makefile.PL, a
make, and a make test in that directory.

make tardist
First does a distdir. Then a command $(PREOP) which
defaults to a null command, followed by $(TOUNIX),
which defaults to a null command under UNIX, and will
convert files in distribution directory to UNIX format
otherwise. Next it runs tar on that directory into a
tarfile and deletes the directory. Finishes with a
command $(POSTOP) which defaults to a null command.

make dist
Defaults to $(DIST_DEFAULT) which in turn defaults to
tardist.

make uutardist
Runs a tardist first and uuencodes the tarfile.

make shdist
First does a distdir. Then a command $(PREOP) which
defaults to a null command. Next it runs shar on that
directory into a sharfile and deletes the intermediate
directory again. Finishes with a command $(POSTOP)
which defaults to a null command. Note: For shdist to
work properly a shar program that can handle
directories is mandatory.

make zipdist
First does a distdir. Then a command $(PREOP) which
defaults to a null command. Runs $(ZIP) $(ZIPFLAGS) on
that directory into a zipfile. Then deletes that
directory. Finishes with a command $(POSTOP) which
defaults to a null command.

make ci
Does a $(CI) and a $(RCS_LABEL) on all files in the

MANIFEST file.

Customization of the dist targets can be done by
specifying a hash reference to the dist attribute of the
WriteMakefile call. The following parameters are
recognized:

CI ('ci -u')
COMPRESS ('compress')
POSTOP ('@ :')
PREOP ('@ :')
TO_UNIX (depends on the system)
RCS_LABEL ('rcs -q -Nv$(VERSION_SYM):')
SHAR ('shar')
SUFFIX ('Z')
TAR ('tar')
TARFLAGS ('cvf')
ZIP ('zip')
ZIPFLAGS ('-r')

An example:

WriteMakefile( 'dist' => { COMPRESS=>"gzip", SUFFIX=>"gz" })

SSEEEE AALLSSOO
ExtUtils::MM_Unix, ExtUtils::Manifest, ExtUtils::testlib,
ExtUtils::Install, ExtUtils::embed

AAUUTTHHOORRSS
Andy Dougherty lt;doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu, Andreas
Koenig lt;A.Koenig@franz.ww.TU-Berlin.DE, Tim Bunce
lt;Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk. VMS support by Charles Bailey
lt;bailey@genetics.upenn.edu. OS/2 support by Ilya
Zakharevich lt;ilya@math.ohio-state.edu. Contact the
makemaker mailing list mailto:makemaker@franz.ww.tu-
berlin.de, if you have any questions.

ExtUtils::MakeMakePre(r3l)Programmers

ExtUtils::MakeMakePre(r3l)Programmers