Perl Tip: Don't Use a Makefile for Your Module

During my internship at SoarTech, I got a chance to learn a lot more about creating Perl modules. I put together a package of scripts for converting old file formats for speech recognition grammars, and I thought it worked beautifully. Of course, to start my module I used the classic tool h2xs:

    h2xs -X -n Foo::Bar

My final code was well tested, and quick to install. I asked my co-worker to install it on his machine, and it was just as easy to use.
I was confident when I presented it to the company, until someone asked, "so, these Perl scripts, they work on Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., right?" I told them they should, since Perl is cross-platform. I became (a good kind of) paranoid, and asked my boss to test my code on his Mac (I was using Windows). The thing exploded when fed my script! I couldn't believe it! What could I have done so wrong?
So, the next day I stayed home a bit to borrow my wife's Mac and do more testing. But there was a big problem: my module used ExtUtils::MakeMaker to install itself. This has been the standard for years, and the majority of CPAN modules use this for installation. The cpan utility recognizes it, and runs installation automatically. However, MakeMaker is DOOMED! It requires an external tool, make, which you can find on every *nix platform, but everywhere else it has to be installed by the user. Strawberry Perl and ActiveState Perl for Windows come with a version (dmake or nmake). But on Mac, you have to install XCode, a whopping 4 gigabyte distribution for Mac developers.

...

Dangit...

My solution was to follow Michael Schwern's advice and convert to using Module::Build, which does not have external dependencies. There happens to be a converter to help you switch. When I ran it on my code, it didn't give a completely valid output, but the edits I did were minimal. From a user standpoint, the module will still be installed using the cpan utility, so nothing has changed.

When I put new distribution, with a shiny new Build.PL file, on a Mac, I still had some failed tests, but there weren't intermingled with the giant BOOM that happens when the cpan utility can't find make. After fixing a bug or two, my module works on Windows and Mac and my boss is a happy camper.