NAME

Test::Prereq - check if Makefile.PL has the right pre-requisites

SYNOPSIS

# if you use Makefile.PL
use Test::More;
eval "use Test::Prereq";
plan skip_all => "Test::Prereq required to test dependencies" if $@;
prereq_ok();

# specify a perl version, test name, or module names to skip
prereq_ok( $version, $name, \@skip );

# if you use Module::Build
use Test::More;
eval "use Test::Prereq::Build";
plan skip_all => "Test::Prereq::Build required to test dependencies" if $@;
prereq_ok();

# or from the command line for a one-off check
perl -MTest::Prereq -eprereq_ok

DESCRIPTION

The prereq_ok() function examines the modules it finds in blib/lib/, blib/script, and the test files it finds in t/ (and test.pl). It figures out which modules they use, skips the modules that are in the Perl core, and compares the remaining list of modules to those in the PREREQ_PM section of Makefile.PL.

If you use Module::Build instead, see Test::Prereq::Build instead.

Modules Test::Prereq can't find

Module::Info only tells Test::Prereq which modules you used, not which distribution they came in. This can be a problem for things in packages like libnet, libwww, Tk, and so on. At the moment Test::Prereq asks CPAN.pm to expand anything in PREREQ_PM to see if one of the distributions you explicity list contains the module you actually used. This might fail in some cases. Please send me anything that does not do what you think it should.

Test::Prereq only asks CPAN.pm for help if it needs it, since CPAN.pm can be slow if it has to fetch things from the network. Once it fetches the right things, it should be much faster.

Problem with Module::Info

Module::Info appears to do something weird if a file it analyzes does not use (or require) any modules. You may get a message like

Can't locate object method "name" via package "B::NULL" at
/usr/perl5.8.0/lib/site_perl/5.8.0/B/Module/Info.pm line 176.

Also, if a file cannot compile, Module::Info dumps a lot of text to the terminal. You probably want to bail out of testing if the files do not compile, though.

Problem with CPANPLUS

CPANPLUS apparently does some weird things, and since it is still young and not part of the Standard Library, Test::Prereq's tests do not do the right thing under it (for some reason). Test::Prereq cheats by ignoring CPANPLUS completely in the tests---at least until someone has a better solution. If you do not like that, you can set $EXCLUDE_CPANPLUS to a false value.

You should be able to do a 'make test' manually to make everything work, though.

Warning about redefining ExtUtils::MakeMaker::WriteMakefile

Test::Prereq has its own version of ExtUtils::MakeMaker::WriteMakefile so it can run the Makefile.PL and get the argument list of that function. You may see warnings about this.

FUNCTIONS

prereq_ok( [ VERSION, [ NAME [, SKIP_ARRAY] ] ] )

Tests Makefile.PL to ensure all non-core module dependencies are in PREREQ_PM. If you haven't set a testing plan already, prereq_ok() creates a plan of one test.

If you don't specify a version, prereq_ok assumes you want to compare the list of prerequisite modules to version 5.008005.

Valid versions come from Module::CoreList (which uses $[).

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Module::CoreList;
print map "$_\n", sort keys %Module::CoreList::version;


5.00307
5.004
5.00405
5.005
5.00503
5.00504
5.006
5.006001
5.006002
5.007003
5.008
5.008001
5.008002
5.008003
5.008004
5.008005
5.009
5.009001

prereq_ok attempts to remove modules found in blib and libraries found in t from the reported prerequisites.

The optional third argument is an array reference to a list of names that prereq_ok should ignore. You might want to use this if your tests do funny things with require.

TO DO

* set up a couple fake module distributions to test

* warn about things that show up in PREREQ_PM unnecessarily

SOURCE AVAILABILITY

This source is part of a SourceForge project which always has the latest sources in CVS, as well as all of the previous releases.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/brian-d-foy/

If, for some reason, I disappear from the world, one of the other members of the project can shepherd this module appropriately.

CONTRIBUTORS

Many thanks to:

Andy Lester, Slavin Rezic, Randal Schwartz, Iain Truskett, Dylan Martin

AUTHOR

brian d foy, <bdfoy@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT and LICENSE

Copyright 2002-2007, brian d foy, All rights reserved

This software is available under the same terms as perl.