What to name a module?

rrwo has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am working on a module that when given a CPAN distribution, will return which modules the distribtion requires (by parsing the Makefile.PL using Module::MakefilePL::Parse if the META.yml file is not available).

A companion module will actually try to fetch the distribution information from CPAN (since it can query a .meta file if it exists before downloading an entire distribution).

Because it is more closely tied to CPAN and works with distributions rather than modules, I am thinking of calling it CPAN::Distribution::Depends.

Comments or suggestions about the namespace would be appreciated.

FYI--I am writing yet another module to do this because existing modules either do not work on my platform or they require preqrequisite modules to be installed. Basically they either compile the module or run Makefile.PL/Build.PL and see what modules are asked for. I'd rather use a safer (and I think faster) method to partially-parse the Makefile.PL if no META.yml is available.

Some tests using all the latest distribution on CPAN show that it works for all but a handful of distributions.

This is actually part of a larger project to show test results (organized by platform) of module dependencies. If there is a failure in the dependency tree, authors can check for this.

Comment on What to name a module?

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Re: What to name a module? by jkeenan1 (Deacon) on Jul 15, 2004 at 22:48 UTC
If you have not already done so, you should also post this question on module-authors@perl.org That's the more-or-less semi-official place to hash out module naming problems. jimk	[reply]
Re: What to name a module? by mojotoad (Monsignor) on Jul 15, 2004 at 19:57 UTC
Isn't there code that already does this -- Makefile.PL already tracks down these dependencies. If you're just wanting to list these modules perhaps you could provide a hook into the existing code. Having said that, I don't like the name CPAN::Distribution::Depends Sounds too much like adult diapers or something. How about CPAN::TraceDependencies or something like that? Matt	[reply]
Re^2: What to name a module? by rrwo (Friar) on Jul 16, 2004 at 01:41 UTC
Isn't there code that already does this -- Makefile.PL already tracks down these dependencies. If you're just wanting to list these modules perhaps you could provide a hook into the existing code. No, there isn't. Makefile.PL does not track down dependencies, it specifies them. I'm working on a module that parses (not traces) the dependency information for an indexing system to use.	[reply]


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