NAME

Haul - Haul packages off CPAN and do things with them

SYNOPSIS

  use Haul;
  my $h = Haul->new;

  # report whether a module is installed
  my $version = $h->installed("Acme::Colour");

  # fetch a package from CPAN
  my $filename = $h->fetch("Acme::Colour");

  # fetch and extract a package from CPAN
  my $dir = $h->extract("Acme::Colour");

  # install a module from CPAN (and its deps)
  $h->install("Acme::Colour");

DESCRIPTION

This module knows about CPAN modules. It can report whether a module is installed, can retrieve packages off CPAN that relate to a module, extract them into a directory for you, and even install modules and all their dependencies.

There are existing tools which do this job, but they are very complicated and only deal with the current perl program. Haul can deal with an external perl program, and so is ideal for build systems, SDK building and automated CPAN testing.

Throughout this module, we use module names (such as "Acme::Colour") instead of package names (such as "Acme-Colour"). Later releases may be more featureful.

METHODS

new

This is the constructor. It takes an optional argument, which is the path to the perl program to install modules to.

  my $h = Haul->new;
  my $h = Haul->new(perl => "/home/acme/perl583/bin/perl");

installed

This method reports the version number of an installed module. It returns undef if the module is not installed.

  if ($h->installed("Acme::Colour") { ... }

fetch

Downloads the package related to a module and returns the path to it.

  my $filename = $h->fetch("Acme::Colour");

extract

Downloads the package related to a module, extracts it into a directory and returns you the path to it.

  my $dir = $h->extract("Acme::Colour");

install

Downloads the package related to a module, and installs it (and its dependencies). Make sure you have appropriate permissions.

  $h->install("Acme::Colour");

AUTHOR

Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2004, Leon Brocard

This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.