NAME

Inline::Module::LeanDist - Develop your module with Inline but distribute lean XS

SYNOPSIS

In your module (say Acme::Math::XS::LeanDist):

    use Inline::Module::LeanDist C => 'DATA';

This module forwards all its parameters to Inline.

NOTE: Currently the entire use statement must be on one line! The DATA section is generally the best place to put your code (heredocs won't work).

In Makefile.PL:

    use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;

    use Inline::Module::LeanDist::MakefilePL;

    WriteMakefile(
        NAME => 'Acme::Math::XS::LeanDist',
        OBJECT => '',
        postamble => {
          inline => {
            file => 'lib/Acme/Math/XS/LeanDist.pm',
          },
        },
    );

NOTE: The postamble.inline.file parameter should be the filename of your module that is using Inline, and you must have an OBJECT parameter in the WriteMakefile arguments.

DESCRIPTION

This module is heavily inspired by Inline::Module. I wrote it because I wanted to be able to use Inline during development, but ship distributions that have no dependencies on it or any other module (for example Inline::Filters and its plugins). I wanted to ship distributions that were (from the user's perspective) identical to the XS dists I would have created by hand (without Inline).

Essentially, Inline compiles your code as lazily as possible which means all compilation dependencies are required at run-time. Inline::Module pushes the compilation dependencies back to build time. However, Inline::Module::LeanDist goes yet one step futher and pushes back the compilation dependencies to distribution creation time (of course the normal XS tool-chain dependency is still required).

The advantage of the Inline::Module approach over Inline is that start-up time is faster for your modules since the fairly heavy-weight Inline system isn't loaded, and a compiled version of your module is always available no matter the state of the current .inline directory (or which user is running the program, file-system permissions, etc).

Inline::Module::LeanDist has all of these advantages as well as some additional ones: Downloading and installing Inline is not necessary to build the distribution. This also goes for any other dependencies (such as the ragel binary required by Inline::Filters::Ragel).

With Inline::Module::LeanDist you don't need to worry about updates to Inline/Inline::Module/etc breaking your distribution, not that there is any more reason to expect Inline::* to break than say MakeMaker or Test::*. Inline::Module recommends avoiding back-compat problems by bundling hundreds of KB of Inline and its dependencies along with every distribution. I recommend against that. Fortunately there is a Cbundle => 0 option in Inline::Module to stop the bundling. Just add the required modules to your distribution's build-time pre-requisites.

Finally, with Inline::Module::LeanDist you don't need to mess around with Inline::Module's awkward "stub" packages.

On the other hand, Inline::Module will likely work for more ILSMs: this module module has only been tested with Inline::C so far. Also, although it's a bit subjective, in my opinion Inline::Module is nicer to develop with over Inline since it always puts the .so files into blib/ which is more "normal" than the .inline directory (and of course it's nice that running make actually, you know, compiles your code).

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Basically it's all a huge hack. :)

During development time, the Inline::Module::LeanDist forwards all its parameters to Inline so you develop with normal Inline practices.

However, Inline::Module::LeanDist::MakefilePL modifies Makefile.PL so that at make dist time, it will comment out the use Inline::Module::LeanDist::MakefilePL; line in Makefile.PL. It will also comment out the use Inline::Module::LeanDist line in your module and replace it with an XSLoader invocation. Finally, it copies the generated .xs file from the .inline directory into the distribution and adds this to the OBJECT parameter in Makefile.PL (as well as the dist's MANIFEST).

The consequence of all this hacking is that the created distributions are lean, XS-only distributions.

EXAMLES

Acme::Math::XS::LeanDist - This is a very simple example in the style of Acme::Math::XS and co.

Unicode::Truncate - This is an actually somewhat useful module that doubles as a proof of concept for Inline::Module::LeanDist and Inline::Filters::Ragel.

BUGS

It really ought to be possible to have multiple separate files in a single dist that use Inline, but this is not yet supported.

It should support Build.PL in addition to Makefile.PL.

It should support other ILSMs (C++ at least).

make prints some annoying warning, need to figure out how to insert dist actions with MakeMaker:

    Makefile:884: warning: overriding commands for target `distdir'
    Makefile:632: warning: ignoring old commands for target `distdir'

SEE ALSO

Inline-Module-LeanDist github repo

Inline::Module

AUTHOR

Doug Hoyte, <doug@hcsw.org>

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2015 Doug Hoyte.

This module is licensed under the same terms as perl itself.

cpanm Inline::Module::LeanDist

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Inline::Module::LeanDist