in reply to CPAN Smoke Tests: Some platforms are meant to be broken

I think if your tests are inapplicable, the best approach is to bail out from Makefile.PL with an exit code of 1 and the message "BAIL OUT!" (or something like that) on STDERR. Maybe it's also enough to just not create a Makefile. Have a look around at other modules that are OS-specific. For Win32::Wlan, I use the following boilerplate code in the tests skip all the tests unless they are applicable:

#perl -w
use strict;
use Test::More;

BEGIN {
    if ($^O !~ /Win32/i) {
        plan skip_all => "Win32::Wlan only works on Win32";
    } else {
        plan tests => 1;
    }
};

...

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: CPAN Smoke Tests: Some platforms are meant to be broken
by saintmike (Vicar) on Aug 21, 2011 at 20:40 UTC
    ... but according to the smoke test reports, there's green light for GNU/Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris :).

    Wouldn't you rather have a clear indication that it doesn't work on these platforms?

[reply]

      I think there is some way of telling CPAN testers to emit n/a for those operating systems, but if somebody installs a module with Win32:: in its name on a system that is not Win32 (or Win64), I don't think that passing tests are their main problem :)

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        I think there is some way of telling CPAN testers to emit n/a for those operating systems

        I think it's just a matter of beginning the Makefile.PL code with something like: 
        exit 0 if $^O=~/MSWin/;

        [download]
        That should put an NA into the matrix for any module being built on Windows - no report gets sent to the author.

        But I think the exit value is important, so it would be best to verify (eg on the cpan-testers mailing list) that 0 is, in fact, the correct value to specify.

        Cheers,
        Rob
[reply]
[d/l]
        From the CPANTS FAQ for authors:

        "How can I indicate that my distribution only works on a particular operating system?"

        While it isn't a very elegant solution, the recommend approach is to either die in the Makefile.PL or Build.PL (or BAIL_OUT in a test file) with one of the following messages:

        • No support for OS
        • OS unsupported

        CPAN Testers tools will look for one of those phrases and will send an NA (Not Available) report for that platform.

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom