Declare author-only dependencies
author_requires 'Some::Module';
author_requires 'Another::Module' => '0.42';
Modules often have optional requirements, for example dependencies that are useful for (optional) tests, but not required for the module to work properly.
Usually you want all developers of a project to have these optional modules installed. However, simply telling everyone or printing diagnostic messages if optional dependencies are missing often isn't enough to make sure all authors have all optional modules installed.
\*(C`Module::Install\*(C' already has a way of detecting an author environment, so an easy way to achieve the above would be something like:
if ($Module::Install::AUTHOR) { requires 'Some::Module'; requires 'Another::Module' => '0.42'; }
Unfortunately, that'll also make the optional dependencies show up in the distributions \*(C`META.yml\*(C' file, which is obviously wrong, as they aren't actually hard requirements.
Working that around requires a considerable amount of non-trivial Makefile.PL hackery, or simply using this module's \*(C`author_requires\*(C' command.
author_requires $module; author_requires $module => $version;
This declares a hard dependency, that's only enforced in author environments and is not put in the generate \*(C`META.yml\*(C' file of the distribution.
Florian Ragwitz <[email protected]>
Copyright (c) 2009 Florian Ragwitz
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.