Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension?

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

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Re: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by Anonymous Monk on Dec 21, 2014 at 10:21 UTC
Because in the olden times of perl4 "libraries" were called foo.pl ... so the .pl got installed . Makefile.PL is no library. https://metacpan.org/pod/ExtUtils::MakeMaker#PM	[reply]
Re: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by syphilis (Archbishop) on Dec 21, 2014 at 13:58 UTC
I wonder why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extention 'PL' For someone, such as myself, who likes to build modules the ol' fashioned manual way, even the capital 'M' is a PITA. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just type `perl makefile.pl` Well ... on Windows `perl makefile.pl` works fine. It's only the case-sensitive systems that barf at such commands. I haven't tried it out, but I suspect that if the distro had a 'makefile.pl' instead of a 'Makefile.PL' then the automated cpan/cpanm-type installations would fail. Has anybody tested that ? Cheers, Rob	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by graff (Chancellor) on Dec 23, 2014 at 08:32 UTC
It's interesting that GitHub recently had to release a security patch for Windows and MacOSX, because the case-insensitive file systems on those OS's would allow a user's own 'git.config' to be overwritten when downloading a code distro from a malicious source (potentially allowing a remote user to run arbitrary commands on the victim's machine).	[reply]
Re^2: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by Anonymous Monk on Dec 22, 2014 at 08:30 UTC
Has anybody tested that ? Well, if the file system is case insensitive, `makefile.pl` will work, but MakeMaker will install makefile.pl along with the .pm See Read more... (2 kB) Naturally it won't work on case sensitive filesystems	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Dec 22, 2014 at 13:45 UTC
In the context of building perl things for installation, .PL files are executed to generate their respective targets. On the other hand, .pl files are just copied. References: https://metacpan.org/pod/ExtUtils::MakeMaker#PL_FILES https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Module-Build/lib/Module/Build/API.pod#PL_files ikegami's correction noted. --MidLifeXis	[reply]
Re^2: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 23, 2014 at 21:07 UTC
They are usually converted into shell scripts, not just copied. Unix: (.pl removed) `#!/path/to/perl/used/to/install/bin/perl eval 'exec /path/to/perl/used/to/install/bin/perl -w -S $0 ${1+"$@"}' if 0; # not running under some shell ...[ script contents here ]...` [download] Windows: (.pl ⇒ .bat) `@rem = '---Perl--- @echo off if "%OS%" == "Windows_NT" goto WinNT perl -x -S "%0" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 goto endofperl :WinNT perl -x -S %0 %* if NOT "%COMSPEC%" == "%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe" goto endofperl if %errorlevel% == 9009 echo You do not have Perl in your PATH. if errorlevel 1 goto script_failed_so_exit_with_non_zero_val 2>nul goto endofperl @rem '; #!/usr/bin/perl -w #line 15 ...[ script contents here ]... __END__ :endofperl` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by Anonymous Monk on Dec 23, 2014 at 22:04 UTC
They are usually converted into shell scripts, not just copied. No, only EXE_FILES are pl2bat-ed, most .pl files are just copied, see Re^2: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? Module::Build will try to pl2bat-ed script_files if they're in a bin directory	[reply]
Re: Why Makefile.PL uses uppercase extension? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Dec 23, 2014 at 20:59 UTC
In a distribution, `.pl` is used for scripts that are meant to be installed. `.PL` files are files used by the installer, but not meant to be installed.	[reply] [d/l] [select]