Been there, done that. :-)
What I do is simply do this:
- Untar everything (check if it's untarred already)
- Loop:
- If Build.PL exists:
- Run $^X -I$install_base/lib Build.PL --install_base $install_base, and catch the output.
- Check for /ERROR: Prerequisite (\S+) isn't installed/. If found, go to next item in loop.
- Run $^X Build install (if failed, go to next item)
- Delete current build from to-do hash.
else if Makefile.PL exists:- Run $^X -I$install_base/lib Makefile.PL LIB=$install_base/lib PREFIX=$install_base, and catch the output.
- Check for /prerequisite\s*(\S+)\s.*not found/. If found, go to next item in loop.
- Run make install (if failed, go to next item)
- Delete current build from to-do hash.
- After each iteration of the loop, if the size of the to-do hash is non-zero and hasn't changed (meaning some prereqs may not be satisfied, or some installs failed), bail. (This is important :->)
Obviously, I do this in perl. I don't even want to know how to do it in make - at least, automatically, that is. If it were in make, I'd just set up a bunch of targets where "DBD-mySQL: DBI" or something ... but that sounds painful, too :-)