NAME

CPAN::Unwind - Recursively determines dependencies of CPAN modules

SYNOPSIS

    use CPAN::Unwind;
    
    my $agent = CPAN::Unwind->new();
    
    my $resp = $agent->lookup("Log::Log4perl");
    die $resp->message() unless $resp->is_success();
    
    my $deps = $resp->dependent_versions();
    
    for my $module (keys %$deps) {
        printf "%30s: %s\n", $module, $deps->{$module};
    }
        # Prints:
        #
        #  Test::Harness: 2.03
        #     Test::More: 0.45
        #     File::Spec: 0.82
        # File::Basename: 0
        #           Carp: 0

    print "Installation schedule:\n";
    for($resp->schedule()) {
        print "$_\n";
    }
        # Installation schedule:
        # Carp
        # File::Basename
        # File::Spec
        # Test::Harness
        # Test::More
        # Log::Log4perl

DESCRIPTION

CPAN::Unwind recursively determines dependencies of CPAN modules. It fetches distribution tarballs from CPAN, unpacks them, and runs Module::Depends::Intrusive on them.

SECURITY NOTE: CPAN::Unwind runs all Makefile.PL files (via Module::Depends::Intrusive) of modules it finds dependencies on. If you are concerned that any module in the dependency tree on CPAN isn't trustworthy, only use it in a secured sandbox.

METHODS

CPAN::Unwind supports the following methods:

my $agent = CPAN::Unwind->new();

Create a new dependency agent. The following options are supported:

cache

Provide your own Cache::Cache object (see Caching).

add

Provide additional dependencies that should be part of the result:

    CPAN::Unwind->new(add => 
        ["Foo", "Bar" => 0.17,
         ...
        ]);

indicates that Foo has a dependency on Bar 0.17, even if it's not listed in Foo's Makefile.PL. This way, you can fix broken Makefile.PL files of some CPAN modules, not listing their dependencies correctly.

$resp = $agent->lookup_single($module_name)

Goes to CPAN and fetches the tarball containing the module specified in $module_name. After unpacking the tarball, it will use Module::Depends::Intrusive to determine the modules it depends on.

Returns a CPAN::Unwind::Response object.

$resp = $agent->lookup($module_name)

Calls lookup_single on $module_name recursively, builds a dependency tree and returns a CPAN::Unwind::Response object containing a consolidated dependency tree.

CPAN::Unwind::Response supports the following methods:

$resp->is_success()

Returns true if there's a valid response and no error occurred.

$resp->message()

Returns a response's error message in case is_success() returned a false value.

$resp->dependent_versions()

Returns a ref to a hash, containing a mapping between names of dependent modules and their version numbers:

    { "Test::More"  =>  0.51,
      "List::Utils" =>  0.38,
      ...
    }

$resp->missing()

Similar to dependent_versions(), but only modules that are currently not installed are returned.

$resp->dependents()

Returns a ref to a hash, mapping module names to their dependencies.

    { "Net::Amazon"  =>  ["Log::Log4perl", "XML::Simple"],
      "List::Utils"  =>  [],
      ...
    }

If an entry holds a ref to an empty array, the module doesn't have any dependencies.

$resp->schedule()

Returns an installation schedule, a list of module names in the correct order without dependency conflicts. Returns undef if no schedule can be made due to circular dependencies.

Caching

To avoid costly downloads, CPAN::Unwind will cache dependencies in a Cache::FileCache cache, where they are stored indefinitely. Running it the second time on a module will speed up processing significantly.

Turnkey Scripts

CPAN::Unwind comes with a ready-to-use script cpan-unwind, which gets installed in perl's bin path. It is ready to use, just call

    $ cpan-unwind Log::Log4perl

to see which modules Log::Log4perl depends on.

CPAN::Unwind requires a valid CPAN configuration.

EXAMPLES

    $ cpan-unwind Net::Amazon
    Carp Compress::Zlib Data::Dumper Fcntl File::Basename File::Path 
    File::Spec HTML::Tagset IO::Socket MIME::Base64 Socket Test::Harness 
    Test::More Test::Simple Time::HiRes URI XML::NamespaceSupport 
    Digest::base File::Temp HTML::Parser Log::Log4perl Net::FTP 
    XML::SAX XML::Simple Digest::MD5 LWP::UserAgent Net::Amazon

LEGALESE

Copyright 2005-2011 by Mike Schilli, all rights reserved. This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

2005, Mike Schilli <cpan@perlmeister.com>