Re: How to handle minimum versions of dependencies which are recommended but not required?

On 8/8/21 5:47 PM, David Cantrell wrote:
> On 08/08/2021 20:34, Diab Jerius wrote:
>
>> Here's the problem, illustrated by this CPAN testers failure:
>>
>> http://www.cpantesters.org/cpan/report/2f961e48-6bf6-1014-90df-a468c69b7236
>>
>> The smoker has versions of Cpanel::JSON::XS and YAML::XS which are 
>> older than my required versions.  Since the ::XS versions are 
>> prioritized over the ::PP versions, the code uses those and thus 
>> fails the tests.   I presume that because the ::XS versions are 
>> recommendations rather than requirements, they weren't updated to the 
>> versions that the code requires.
>>
>> Is there some way of triggering an update to the required versions 
>> via the metadata, or should I put a runtime version check into the 
>> tests and skip if the appropriate versions aren't installed?
>
> You can check what's already installed in your Makefile.PL or 
> equivalent, and prompt the user if you can't figure out what to do 
> automatically. I ASSume that the correct thing to do would be to do as 
> you currently do if none of your deps are installed, but if any are 
> installed you'd want to tell EU::MM's WriteMakefile function that you 
> have a runtime requirement for updated versions.
>
> Use the prompt() function from ExtUtils::MakeMaker as that will pay 
> attention to the PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT env var. You may also want to pay 
> attention to AUTOMATED_TESTING and NONINTERACTIVE_TESTING. In 
> particular you will find that CPAN-testers generally set all three of 
> those.
>
> Vary as appropriate if you use a different build system.
>
This is good advice.  I'm ambivalent about prompting the user when the 
functionality is optional. I've also had varied success when using 
installers such as cpanm with prompts & warnings, as there's a lot less 
info presented to the user.

What I should probably do is split the distribution into core and 
optional components.

Thanks!

Diab