Re: Can ExtUtils::MakeMaker recommend to install optional modules?

[Dallaylaen]

This article sums up dependencies pretty well.

Here's how you specify recommended/suggested dependencies:

use ExtUtils::MakeMaker 6.64;

WriteMakefile(
    # other stuff
    META_MERGE => {
        "meta-spec" => { version => 2 },
        prereqs => {
            test => {
                recommends => {
                    'CPAN::Meta' => '2.120900',
                },
            },
            runtime => {
                recommends => {
                    'Text::CSV_XS' => 0,
                },
            },
        },
    },
);

[1nickt]

Here's how you specify recommended/suggested dependencies:

For the record: there is a difference between recommends and suggests.

The two (and requires and conflicts) exist so the module author has more control over, well, recommendations and suggestions. Not all versions of all clients support the newest spec, but recent ones do.

• CPAN::Meta::Spec prereqs section
• Neil Bowers blog on specifying dependencies

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous Monk]

What if I don't want the recommended additional packages? How can I force the build to ignore the recommends? In my case a command line tool recommends, through a chain of dependencies, that I install the X server. I really don't want to do that.

[Dallaylaen]

Default cpan client has recommends_policy and suggests_policy options under o conf just for that. Couldn't find anything in cpanm, but maybe it can, too. No idea about cpanplus.

Btw installing raw CPAN on perlbrew was nontrivial, though not complicated after all. Maybe brew should bundle a script for that...

[Anonymous Monk]

 --with-recommends, --with-suggests
EXPERIMENTAL: Installs dependencies declared as recommends and suggest
+s respectively, per META spec. When these dependencies fail to instal
+l, cpanm continues the installation, since they're just recommendatio
+n/suggestion.

Enabling this could potentially make a circular dependency for a few m
+odules on CPAN, when recommends adds a module that recommends back th
+e module in return.

There's also --without-recommend and --without-suggests to override th
+e default decision made earlier in PERL_CPANM_OPT.

Defaults to false for both.