dash2 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello again.

I am wondering if there is a quick and easy way to figure out whether a module and all its prerequisites are pure perl. (For example, GD::Graph is pure perl, but it depends on GD, which is not).

I am also wondering if there is an easy way to see if a module and all its prerequisites are compatible with different versions of Perl 5.

Has anyone encountered these problems? Is there an easy way to go through the dependency tree? I tried CPANPLUS but it seems rather buggy... CPAN only has prereqs for Bundle objects.

Thanks,

dave hj~

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: CPAN prerequisite tree
by pg (Canon) on Jan 14, 2003 at 17:54 UTC
    I don't think this information is provided or maintained. There was a moment, I thought you can send some feedback to cpan on this, but then I realized it is not realistic. As most of those modules are maintained by persons like you and me, I would doubt they have the effort/environment to test all this.

    I think it is really in everyone's hands to try it by yourself.

    One thing you can suggest is for CPAN to maintain certain info like compatibility etc., not by author, but by users. For example, if you used module A::B::C, with perl n.n.n on platform XYZ, then you should be allowed to go CPAN, and certify this, so other users have a similar environment can be benefited from your experience.

    Update:

    Checked pfaut's link, Hm... coverage is not good enough. They don't have a single tester using AIX, I will join. If you can help, pls join.
[reply]

      Some of this information is available at CPAN Testers. As new or updated modules get uploaded to the PAUSE servers, there are people who get notified of the new release. They then download the modules and test on whatever platforms they have available. The results are stored here.

      ---
print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':'';
$m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) }
split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';

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