[rt.cpan.org #101554] Co-existence with non-Win32 environments

Thu Jan 15 04:17:25 2015: Request 101554 was acted upon.
Transaction: Ticket created by ralesk
       Queue: Win32-Console
     Subject: Co-existence with non-Win32 environments
   Broken in: (no value)
    Severity: (no value)
       Owner: Nobody
  Requestors: [email protected]
      Status: new
 Ticket <URL: https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=101554 >


The exported colour variables seem to cause some trouble if you're writing a module that tries to work on both Win32 and normal ANSI sequence TTYs.

In my case, if we're under Win32, I use console functions to colour my output, if we're under Linux, I just print to STDERR with escape sequences.  However, under `use strict`, the variables will not be defined and my module won't compile because I cannot `use Win32::Console` (it is not possible to compile even a stub on Linux, as the compiler says OS not supported).  If I predefine the variables (unconditionally, because if is a block, so I can't usefully put a `my` declaration inside it of course), then importing Win32::Console won't override them so all I get is black on black...

The solution seems to be to always refer to these variables with their full names, ie. $Win32::Console::FG_YELLOW, which makes strict and Linux happy, and still works on Windows.

I wonder if there's a better way than the current exporting of variables (`use constant FG_YELLOW`?), or if Win32::Console could be made to compile to a stub module on non-Win32 so it can be used unconditionally and just not get in the way.