Installers that handle more than just modules and scripts?

[jhourcle]

I have a bunch of darkpan modules that I've been maintaining for years, built around ExtUtils::MakeMaker ... but some have configuration files, some are CGIs that need images/javascript/css, and I really hate just inserting stuff into the Makefile via MY::postamble.

The last time something similar was asked on here was 2007. I did a quick search on CPAN, and found Module::CGI::Install and App::Build, built around Module::Install and Module::Build respectively. But neither one of them seems to have any uptake as best I can tell (using Google codesearch).

My other thought was to insert a script for the person to to run after the module's installed, and that script would download the necessary files and put them in the right place. (downloading as I can't be sure where the module's tarball might be) ... but that seems a little iffy, as you don't have a chance to review what's getting inserted ... and for the ones with config files, they actually need the files to run their tests.

Are there other alternatives that I've managed to overlook? Or if other people are using App::Build or Module::CGI::Install (other than the authors), could you comment on your experience with it?

[ikegami]

I don't know if it suits your needs, but one can use File::ShareDir to access files installed into per-distro and per-module directories such as using Module::Build's share_dir directive. (The other installers have the means of installing here too.) This is really only good for read-only files, and if you don't need the files to be in a specific directory.

[Arunbear]

I've used App::Build for some work projects (with a use case quite similar to yours). It was easy to use and effective.

[pklausner]

Yes, this looks like an OS installer job. Unfortunately there are plenty of them. One good work-around is the Easy Package Manager. From one meta package description - which actually is mostly a RPM specfile - you can generate most Unix package formats plus one generic installer. The more similar you keep the target installations, the easier is your meta package.

[Anonymous Monk]

File::ShareDir / File::ShareDir::Install

[JavaFan]

Maybe you're using the wrong tool? Seems like you want to reinvent what your OS native package manager is already doing. Why not reuse what's already there?

[jhourcle]

I would if I were running it in a homogeneous environment, but it's being distributed to 4 sites now, running a mix of MacOS, Solaris and two linux flavors. I'm in the process of updating my installers because we're looking to add another 3-5 sites into the mix.

[JavaFan]

Quoting rpm5.org:

Traditionally, RPM is a core component of many Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, CentOS, Mandriva Linux, and many others. But RPM is also used for software packaging on many other Unix operating systems like FreeBSD, Sun OpenSolaris, IBM AIX and Apple Mac OS X through the cross-platform Unix software distribution OpenPKG. Additionally, the RPM archive format is an official part of the Linux Standard Base (LSB).

Quoting netbsd.org:

Table 1. Platforms supported by pkgsrc:

Platform 	   Date Support Added
NetBSD 	           Aug 1997
Solaris 	   Mar 1999
Linux 	           Jun 1999
Darwin (Mac OS X)  Oct 2001
FreeBSD 	   Nov 2002
OpenBSD 	   Nov 2002
IRIX 	           Dec 2002
BSD/OS 	           Dec 2003
AIX 	           Dec 2003
Interix  	   Mar 2004
DragonFlyBSD 	   Oct 2004
OSF/1 	           Nov 2004
HP-UX 	           Apr 2007
QNX 	           Oct 2007
Haiku 	           Sep 2010

That's with just one minute of researching package systems.