NAME

authority - loads a module only if it has a particular authority

SYNOPSIS

 use authority 'cpan:STEVAN', Moose => qw();
 use authority 'cpan:TOBYINK', HTML::HTML5::Builder => qw(:standard);

DESCRIPTION

This pragma allows you to indicate that you wish to load a module only if its authority is a particular URI.

Using this pragma automatically enables UNIVERSAL::AUTHORITY.

use authority $authority, $module, @arguments

Require and import the module at compile time. This is the usual mode of operation.

authority->import($authority, $module, @arguments)

Require and import the module at run time.

Note that the special $authority value "Any", indicates that any authority is allowed (including undef).

Experimentally, $module may contain a module name and minimum version, separated with a space.

There is also a very experimental feature allowing releases of the same package by different authorities to live side-by-side, though only one of them can be required into a running script.

In this case, assuming that the inc path is /opt/perl/lib and a script does this:

 use authority 'cpan:JOE', My::Module => qw();

Then Perl will attempt to load /opt/perl/lib/cpan_3A_JOE/My/Module.pm before it tries the usual /opt/perl/lib/My/Module.pm.

This is not anywhere near as powerful as the authority feature of Perl 6, but it's a start.

BUGS

Please report any bugs to http://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Queue=authority.

SEE ALSO

• Object::AUTHORITY - an AUTHORITY method for your class

• authority::shared - a more sophisticated AUTHORITY method for your class

• UNIVERSAL::AUTHORITY - an AUTHORITY method for every class (deprecated)

• UNIVERSAL::AUTHORITY::Lexical - an AUTHORITY method for every class, within a lexical scope

• authority (this module) - load modules only if they have a particular authority

Background reading: http://feather.perl6.nl/syn/S11.html, http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=694377.

AUTHOR

Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This software is copyright (c) 2011 by Toby Inkster.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.