NAME

Alien::Alien - Find or use alien package conversion tool

VERSION

version 0.02

SYNOPSIS

use Alien::Alien;
use Env qw( @PATH );

unshift @ENV, Alien::Alien->bin_dir;

system "alien --to-rpm --scripts ./mkpkg.deb";

DESCRIPTION

This Alien module provides the alien tool that converts between different Linux package formats. Reading this documentation, and seeing the name, you may feel as though you are glancing through the looking glass. This distribution is not entirely a joke, though it is somewhat to tongue in cheek. One of the useful things that this module provides is some interesting challenges in the Alien space. That includes

Tool is implemented as Perl

alien is implemented in Perl, and distributed as a standard CPAN style distribution, but isn't available ON CPAN.

Project is hosted on SourceForge

This module drove development of Alien::Build::Plugin::Decode::SourceForge, which I expect will be useful for other Aliens.

Tool is architecture independent

Aliens using Alien::Build are usually installed in the architecture specific library location, because they usually are architecture specific. Since this tool is Perl, it is architecture independent, so we install it in the regular architecture independent library location.

Project is distributed as a tar.xz file.

This is an added complication and sort of a hassle for a few bytes saved. Thanks!

METHODS

bin_dir

my @dirs = Alien::Alien->bin_dir;

Returns the list of directories that need to be added to the PATH in order for alien to work. This may be an empty list (as for a system install).

SEE ALSO

Alien

alienfile

Alien::Build

Alien::Base

AUTHOR

Graham Ollis <plicease@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Graham Ollis.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.