Packaging programs (as opposed to modules)

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

I've read How do you package your programs? and a buncha other nodes regarding installation and distribution and haven't found quite what I'm looking for.

Basically, I would like to install a set of scripts, man pages, CGI programs, and compiled (C) wrapper executables for setuid purposes. I'd like

the stuff that needs to be in people's PATHs to go into $PREFIX/bin and its (processed) POD in $PREFIX/man/man1,
the stuff that doesn't (like the setuid wrappers, the scripts that need to get wrapped, and the stuff that runs out of cron) to go in $PREFIX/sbin and its POD in $PREFIX/man/man1m,
the configuration files for all this to go in $PREFIX/etc, and
the CGI programs (if Apache is installed) to go in $SERVER_ROOT/cgi-bin.

ExtUtils::MakeMaker seems ill-suited for this. It wants to put everything either in $PREFIX/bin (POD in $PREFIX/man/man1) or $PREFIX/lib (POD in $PREFIX/man/man3). It also wants to make modules rather than bundles of scripts. While modular programming is laudable (and I did actually split out much of the functionality into modules), installing applications rather than modules seems beyond the scope of MakeMaker. And Module::Build doesn't seem to understand this either.

I suppose what I'm looking for is a more general-purpose installation tool along the lines of GNU Configure, but less complicated to use and more suited to Perl. Any suggestions?

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Re: Packaging programs (as opposed to modules) by samtregar (Abbot) on Apr 15, 2004 at 19:07 UTC
It sounds like you're trying to distribute a web application. You might be interested in reading this: Installation System Design for a Large Apache/mod_perl Application. The design described there is being used, with some modifications, in Krang. So far it's worked very well for us. -sam	[reply]
Re: Re: Packaging programs (as opposed to modules) by u235sentinel (Hermit) on Apr 16, 2004 at 16:11 UTC
Forgive my ignorance but I thought a package was a module. Is this not the case? I am reading through Oreilly's "Perl Objects, References and Modules". There was a chapter which discussed "Packages". It sounded like a regular module. Or am I just not getting it? Thx	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Packaging programs (as opposed to modules) by bigmacbear (Monk) on Apr 16, 2004 at 17:23 UTC
"Packaging" in this sense is putting together a set of application-level scripts, configuration files, etc. in a form suitable for distribution and installation. In other words, I am using the word "package" in one of its common English senses and not in its Perl sense. If I'm not mistaken, in Perl (5), every module is a package, but not every package is a module. The "package" keyword simply defines a non-default name space in which to put variables, functions, and/or methods. It can be used within an ordinary script, but is usually used at the top of a module's .pm file to define the name space of the module using the module's name.	[reply]
Re: Packaging programs (as opposed to modules) by waswas-fng (Curate) on Apr 15, 2004 at 16:12 UTC
Mail::Spamassassin installs modules, scripts, compiled executables and man pages. Maybe take a look at that for hints on how to do it for youself? I am sure the CVS tree for it has the installer generator info. -Waswas	[reply]


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