byterock

Well today I am going to give the quick one-two to Toby's little creation called 'Dist::Inkt' or as the subtitle calles it Yet Another distribution builder why he didn't call it YADB I will never know but that was for hit to decided.

So a usual these days I had a quick look at the compatibility matrix on CPAN Testers and it seems to be windows friendly and the dependency list is not too bad and it seem to install ok after the usual huff and puffing on by drive.

Now the documentation is very extensive and there are plenty of very good examples and at least one profile example. So that is great what is not great is this is not the program I am looking for as all it does is create a manifest and generate a tar ball.

So like Dist::Maker from the my last post I can rule this one out for my current use.

However I like to give everything I look at fair dinkum so I will give a little on what is good about Toby's system.

So from my quick look at the code I see it is basically a framework for creating dists in a standard manner. In other words you as the programmer will have to put all the nuts and bolts together to give you exactly what you want.

So how it has been structure is you simply write up a role to do the work you want so you can use one to the nine I have found as they are or overload/rewite them as you see fit and I suppose if you have time write you own from scratch.

Then you simply create you own profile for you dist (here is an example) by extending 'Dist::Inkt' with the roles you have made up.

Simple yes??

Well a good of work yes but it you are doing a large number of distribution or releases, I could see this as a very good way to package up releases as it is very customizable, I would give this frame-work a try. Thats about all really as doing a review of this frame-work would require a good number of posts or one very very long one.

So not for my current project but I will have a use for this on another project I am working but that wont be for a year or so about the same time when this little guy becomes nice and tasty,