How can you run a config script when installing a perl module?

user_1641112 0
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I've been searching for a couple of hours and I'm coming up empty trying to find a solution. I'm using Dist::Zilla. I have a module that uses a simple config file in .ini format located in the module's share/ directory. When my module is installed, I'd like the install script to prompt the user for configuration options and save the user's options in the config file. Then, using File::UserConfig, it will copy the file over to the user's configuration directory where it can be loaded by the module when it runs.

Someone had suggested the Dist::Zilla::Plugin::MakeMaker::Custom module but I know next to nothing about MakeMaker and how I might write a custom one to kick off the configuration script.

I'm surprised I can't find anything that makes this easy to do. Perhaps I'm searching on the wrong keywords?

perl
1 Answers

You had discussed this in IRC, and the gist is:

  1. You cannot rely on the installation process allowing any interaction, as a large amount of installations are via cpanm which is non-interactive and hides output from Makefile.PL by default. This is because users don't like having to configure things, and as an example, a Carton deployment is frequently non-interactive by its nature. You can allow configuration via environment variables recognized by your Makefile.PL to get around this.

  2. You can document to install using the --interactive option for cpanm in order to respond to prompts in your Makefile.PL, injected into the generated file using the [MakeMaker::Awesome] plugin.

  3. You can include a script with the distribution that will set up the configuration so the user can do it themselves separate from the installation.

user_58482000
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