Module forwarding

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

Dear Perl Monks, I have a set of libraries that my team would like to shares, (e.g., myLib/1.0/myLib.pm). The trouble is that we want a "symlink" in a standard location to myLib.pm -- BUT: symlinks are not supported in the present environment. I would like to create a shell .pm that does the linking. Something like

myLib.pm:
use <long_path_to_real_location/myLib.pm>;
[download]

I am fairly certain that the above won't work because of namespace issues. Is there a module import forwarder? (oh and what should one call such a thing?) I could just copy the file, but that means patches have to get applied in two places... Any help is appreciated!

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Re: Module forwarding by Corion (Patriarch) on Feb 06, 2012 at 14:58 UTC
Have you looked at use? It shows how `use` works and that should give you enough hints on how to do your "module loader" as well. Also, maybe you want to look at perlvar regarding `@INC` instead of doing manual module loading?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Module forwarding by Anonymous Monk on Feb 06, 2012 at 15:43 UTC
As far as using @INC: We want to do that with a single repository... Our format is that each lib lives in its own versioned directory -- and each directory is owned by a team member, and we have about 30 such directories... So having them individually in the path is inconvenient. We could centralize the mechanism to create @INC -- which should reduce headaches when a file upgrade occurs. Indeed, that's the motivation for centralizing them via symlinks. Each module is also run-able to provide self-tests and documentation. I had hope there was a standard CPAN solution for this... at the moment mucking around with require/import/do to see if I can hack it out......	[reply]
Re^3: Module forwarding by afoken (Chancellor) on Feb 06, 2012 at 16:21 UTC
That concept lacks an installer. Perl has standard mechanisms for installing modules, ExtUtils::MakeMaker is the oldest one, Module::Build is newer, several others attempt to improve various details. But the best: All of these can be used by the various CPAN modules to install modules from a repository into a running system. Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply]
Re^3: Module forwarding by Anonymous Monk on Feb 06, 2012 at 16:37 UTC
.. this isn't looking very easy... My problem is that it seems to depend on whether the forwarded module uses "export" or not....	[reply]
Re^4: Module forwarding by Anonymous Monk on Feb 06, 2012 at 16:55 UTC
Re^5: Module forwarding by Corion (Patriarch) on Feb 06, 2012 at 17:18 UTC
Re: Module forwarding by MidLifeXis (Monsignor) on Feb 06, 2012 at 15:24 UTC
In addition to what Corion mentioned above, see also the environment PERLLIB or PERL5LIB. --MidLifeXis	[reply]
Re: Module forwarding by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Feb 06, 2012 at 15:29 UTC
My intuition tells me to try to use minicpan for a central server, put all of my modules there, and then write a script to periodically update modules on client computers, but as I see this has been apparently though of before by people smarter than myself. In Szabgab's follow up post he points to several modules by brian d foy that I haven't researched yet which may do the job. Celebrate Intellectual Diversity	[reply]