Devel::Hide - Forces the unavailability of specified Perl modules (for testing)
use Devel::Hide qw(Module/ToHide.pm); require Module::ToHide; # fails use Devel::Hide qw(Test::Pod Test::Pod::Coverage); require Test::More; # ok use Test::Pod 1.18; # fails
Other common usage patterns:
$ perl -MDevel::Hide=Module::ToHide Makefile.PL bash$ PERL5OPT=MDevel::Hide bash$ DEVEL_HIDE_PM='Module::Which Test::Pod' bash$ export PERL5OPT DEVEL_HIDE_PM bash$ perl Makefile.PL
outputs (like blib)
Devel::Hide hides Module::Which, Test::Pod, etc.
Given a list of Perl modules/filenames, this module makes require and use statements fail (no matter the specified files/modules are installed or not).
require
use
They die with a message like:
Can't locate Module/ToHide.pm (hidden)
The original intent of this module is to allow Perl developers to test for alternative behavior when some modules are not available. In a Perl installation, where many modules are already installed, there is a chance to screw things up because you take for granted things that may not be there in other machines.
For example, to test if your distribution does the right thing when a module is missing, you can do
perl -MDevel::Hide=Test::Pod Makefile.PL
forcing Test::Pod to not be found (whether it is installed or not).
Test::Pod
Another use case is to force a module which can choose between two requisites to use the one which is not the default. For example, XML::Simple needs a parser module and may use XML::Parser or XML::SAX (preferring the latter). If you have both of them installed, it will always try XML::SAX. But you can say:
XML::Simple
XML::Parser
XML::SAX
perl -MDevel::Hide=XML::SAX script_which_uses_xml_simple.pl
NOTE. This module does not use Carp. As said before, denial dies.
This module is pretty trivial. It uses a code reference in @INC to get rid of specific modules during require - denying they can be successfully loaded and stopping the search before they have a chance to be found.
There are three alternative ways to include modules in the hidden list:
setting @Devel::Hide::HIDDEN
environment variable DEVEL_HIDE_PM
import()
Optionally, you can propagate the list of hidden modules to your process' child processes, by passing '-from:children' as the first option when you use() this module. This works by populating PERL5OPT, and is incompatible with Taint mode, as explained in perlrun.
PERL5OPT
There is some interaction between lib and this module
lib
use Devel::Hide qw(Module/ToHide.pm); use lib qw(my_lib);
In this case, 'my_lib' enters the include path before the Devel::Hide hook and if Module/ToHide.pm is found in 'my_lib', it succeeds.
Also for modules that were loaded before Devel::Hide, require and use succeeds.
Since 0.0005, Devel::Hide warns about modules already loaded.
$ perl -MDevel::Hide=Devel::Hide -e '' Devel::Hide: Too late to hide Devel/Hide.pm
Nothing is exported.
DEVEL_HIDE_PM - if defined, the list of modules is added to the list of hidden modules
DEVEL_HIDE_VERBOSE - on by default. If off, supresses the initial message which shows the list of hidden modules in effect
PERL5OPT - used if you specify '-from:children'
"perldoc -f require"
Test::Without::Module
Please report bugs via CPAN RT http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Devel-Hide.
Adriano R. Ferreira, <ferreira@cpan.org>
with contributions from David Cantrell <dcantrell@cpan.org>
Copyright (C) 2005-2007 by Adriano R. Ferreira
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
To install Devel::Hide, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm Devel::Hide
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install Devel::Hide
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.