SOURCE vs DISTRIBUTION

You may face Software-License-OrLaterPack in source or distribution form.

If you are going to release your Perl distribution under the terms of GPLv3+ or AGPLv3+ license, you will likely be interested in using Software-License-OrLaterPack distribution.

Since Perl is an interpreting language, modules in the distribution look like sources. Actually, they are Perl source files. But they are not actual sources, because they are built (preprocessed or generated) by Dist::Zilla. If you are going to develop (or hack) the Software-License-OrLaterPack itself, you will likely need the actual source, not distribution.

How to distinguish source and distribution:

  • Source may contain Mercurial files and directories .hgignore, .hgtags, .hg/, while distribution should not.

  • Source should contain files dist.ini, weaver.ini, while distribution may not.

  • Source should not contain xt/ directory, while distribution should.

  • Name of source directory does not include version, while name of distribution does.