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Alien-Build-0.11
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/ Alien::Build::Manual::FAQ

NAME

Alien::Build::Manual::FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about Alien::Build

VERSION

version 0.11

SYNOPSIS

perldoc Alien::Build::Manual::FAQ

DESCRIPTION

This document serves to answer the most frequently asked questions made by developers creating Alien modules using Alien::Build.

QUESTIONS

What is Alien, Alien::Base and Alien::Build?

Alien in a Perl namespace for defining dependencies in CPAN for libraries and tools which are not "native" to CPAN. For a manifesto style description of the Why, and How see Alien. Alien::Base is a base class for the Alien runtime. Alien::Build is a tool for probing the operating system for existing libraries and tools, and downloading, building and installing packages. alienfile is a recipe format for describing how to probe, download, build and install a package.

How do I specify a minimum or exact version requirement for packages that use pkg-config?

TODO

How to create an Alien module for a packages that do not support pkg-config?

TODO

How do I test my package once it is built (before it is installed)?

TODO

How do I patch packages that need alterations?

TODO

How do I build a package that uses build system

autoconf

Use the autoconf plugin (Alien::Build::Plugin::Build::Autoconf). If your package provides a pkg-config .pc file, then you can also use the PkgConfig plugin (Alien::Build::Plugin::PkgConfig::Negotiate).

use alienfile
plugin PkgConfig => 'libfoo';
share {
  plugin Download => (
    url => 'http://example.org/dist',
    version => qr/libfoo-([0-9\.])\.tar\.gz$/,
  );
  plugin Extract => 'tar.gz';
  plugin 'Build::Autoconf' => ();
};

If you need to provide custom flags to configure, you can do that too:

share {
  plugin 'Build::Autoconf' => ();
  build [
    '%{configure} --prefix=%{alien.install.autoconf_prefix} --disable-shared --enable-foo',
    '%{make}',
    '%{make} install',
  ];
};

If your package requires GNU Make, use %{gmake} instead of %{make}.

autoconf-like

If you see an error like this:

Unknown option "--with-pic".

It is because the autoconf plugin uses the --with-pic option by default, since it makes sense most of the time, and autoconf usually ignores options that it does not recognize. Some autoconf style build systems fail when they see an option that they do not recognize. You can turn this behavior off for these packages:

plugin 'Build::Autoconf' => (
  with_pic => 0,
);

Another thing about the autoconf plugin is that it uses DESTDIR to do a double staged install. If you see an error like "nothing was installed into destdir", that means that your package does not support DESTDIR. You should instead use the MSYS plugin and use a command sequence to do the build like this:

share {
  plugin 'Build::MSYS' => ();
  build [
    # eplicitly running configure with "sh" will make sure that
    # it works on windows as well as UNIX.
    'sh configure --prefix=%{alien.install.autoconf_prefix} --disable-shared',
    '%{make}',
    '%{make} install',
  ];
};

CMAKE

TODO

vanilla Makefiles

You can use the %{make} or %{gmake} helper (use the latter if your package requires GNU Make. You can also use perl configuration to make sure that position independent code is generated:

build {
  build [
    [ '%{make}', 'CC=%{perl.config.cc}', 'CFLAGS=%{perl.config.cccdlflags} %{perl.config.optimize}' ],
    [ '%{make}', 'install', 'PREFIX=%{alien.install.prefix}' ],
  ],
};

Can/Should I write a tool oriented Alien module?

Certainly. The original intent was to provide libraries, but tools are also quite doable using the Alien::Build toolset. A good example of how to do this is Alien::nasm. You will want to use the 'Probe::CommandLine':

use alienfile;

plugin 'Probe::CommandLine' => (
  command => 'gzip',
);

How do I use Alien::Build from Dist::Zilla?

For creating Alien::Base and Alien::Build based dist from Dist::Zilla you can use the dzil plugin Dist::Zilla::Plugin::AlienBuild.

How to check the share install if my library doesn't provide a .pc file.

TODO

I have a question not listed here!

There are a number of forums available to people working on Alien, Alien::Base and Alien::Build modules:

#native on irc.perl.org

This is intended for native interfaces in general so is a good place for questions about Alien generally or Alien::Base and Alien::Build specifically.

mailing list

The perl5-alien google group is intended for Alien issues generally, including Alien::Base and Alien::Build.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/perl5-alien

Open a support ticket

If you have an issue with Alie::Build itself, then please open a support ticket on the project's GitHub issue tracker.

https://github.com/plicease/Alien-Build/issues

SEE ALSO

Alien::Build, Alien::Build::MM, Alien::Build::Plugin, alienfile

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.