How to require IPv6 support

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

I've just extended my Net::CIDR::Lookup module with an IPv6 version and am seeing a lot of failed tests form CPANtesters. Clearly an oversight: I just assumed Socket would nowadays always export unpack_sockaddr_in6 and the like. This needs fixing but there's two things I'm not clear about:

Is there a halfway easy way nowadays to find the oldest version of a module that supports a certain feature in the first place? Searching around here I found a half-decade-old thread that mentions it's a tedious process, but I knew that already :) Basically bisecting one's way through every version on BackPAN should be rather straightforward, maybe someone has written some code for it already?
Now I think the IPv6-Socket problem may even be a bit more complicated as e.g. unpack_sockaddr_in6 will only actually be functional if the system had IPv6 support at XS compile time, otherwise it's there but croaks when called. I'm quite sure ExtUtils::MakeMaker has no way of checking a prerequisite for anything else but a version number, but maybe something like Module::Build does? I haven't found anything like it in the docs but I suppose something like this would make sense---a sub instead of a version that just returns a boolean indicating whether the installed version is acceptable:
```
PREREQ_PM => {
        'Bit::Vector' => 0,
        Socket => sub {
            eval {
                Socket::unpack_sockaddr_in6("\xa".("\0"x22)."\x01\0\0\
+0\0");
                1;
            } or do { $@ and return 0; }
        }        
    },
[download]
```

Comment on How to require IPv6 support Select or Download Code

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Re: How to require IPv6 support by VinsWorldcom (Prior) on Aug 02, 2012 at 11:27 UTC
You'll see fails for Win32 with Perl certainly less than 5.14. I know for a fact the Strawberry < 5.14 versions of Socket do not support IPv6 as I've tried with them on Windows 7 which certainly does support IPv6 and will compile IPv6 C code. The work around I've used is: `use if $] < 5.014, "Socket" => qw(inet_ntoa unpack_sockaddr_in IPPROT +O_TCP AF_INET AF_UNSPEC); use if $] < 5.014, "Socket6"; use if $] < 5.014, "Socket::GetAddrInfo" => qw(getaddrinfo getnameinf +o); use if $] >= 5.014, "Socket" => qw(:addrinfo inet_ntoa inet_ntop unpac +k_sockaddr_in unpack_sockaddr_in6 IPPROTO_TCP AF_INET AF_UNSPEC);` [download] UPDATE: See UPDATE section in Re^2: ipv6 support on windows.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How to require IPv6 support by Anonymous Monk on Aug 01, 2012 at 21:54 UTC
?? http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git?a=search&h=HEAD&st=free&s=unpack_sockaddr_in6 Socket is dual-lived, just require the latest version	[reply]
Re^2: How to require IPv6 support by mbethke (Hermit) on Aug 01, 2012 at 22:25 UTC
Nice, I hadn't seen that repo's web interface yet! That's a solution for core modules at least, but I still have the problem under (2) that even though it's the latest version it may not work. For now I think I'll work around it by simply skipping the corresponding tests and noting in the docs that you must have an IPv6-enabled Socket module to use this, but it would be nice to be able top specify this in a Module::* installer.	[reply]
Re^3: How to require IPv6 support by Anonymous Monk on Aug 01, 2012 at 22:41 UTC
For now I think I'll work around it by simply skipping the corresponding tests and noting in the docs that you must have an IPv6-enabled Socket module to use this, Sounds like the common practice :) but it would be nice to be able top specify this in a Module:: installer.* Hmm, so a patch to Module::Depends - identify the dependencies of a distribution and a patch to Module::Install#requires So you end up with `requires qw' Socket 2 unpack_sockaddr_in6 '; # requires qw' Socket 2 Socket::unpack_sockaddr_in6 ';` [download] That could work, and doesn't look particularly hard to implement.	[reply] [d/l]