Using modules that are not installed
Yesterday I stumbled across an error message of perl5 I've never seen before:
Can't locate loadable object for module X in @INC
I was trying to test a module A that uses a module B that isn't installed. The perlmonks told me that it had something to do with DynaLoader.
I already had a
use lib "'MODULEB/blib/lib";
in my setup.
What made it work was an additional
use lib "'MODULEB/blib/arch";
The reason is that module B is XS based and results in a moduleb.so. DynaLoad looks for this moduleb.so and is only able to find it if the "arch"-directory is in @INC.
Since the application has lots of modules that use each other, I've come with the following snippet I include in every test:
BEGIN {
my $fh;
# this is the directories where all modules are in seperate directories
my $dir = '..';
opendir($fh, $dir) || die "can't opendir $dir: $!";
my @entries=sort readdir($fh);
closedir $fh;
# get rid of '.' and '..'
@entries= grep { /^[^.]/ } @entries;
# add the directory name to get a name we can give 'use'
@entries= map { "$dir/$_" } @entries;
# we only want directories ...
@entries= grep { -d } @entries;
# expand @INC
for my $dir (@entries) {
# Perl-only modules
eval "use lib '$dir/blib/lib'";
# modules with XS
eval "use lib '$dir/blib/arch'";
}
}
That naturally gives me a quite impressive @INC.
perlanalyst, testing, compilers
I think this would be equivalent to both those lines:
use blib 'MODULEB';While I'm still trying to find out how to format code I get a reply ...
That was my first post. Thanks! :-)
Plus: It works; so I can replace those two 'use lib's with one 'use blib'.
This is a lot more complicated than just installing all of the modules in a temporary directory, perhaps with local::lib. There are many ways to handle this complexity, and the trick is to get rid of as many delicate, un-conventional pieces as you can so you don't end up with code like this. :)
Hi Brian, thanks for pointing me to local::lib, which is fine for local installations.
The thing is that I want to test the application and all its modules before I install it, so local::lib wasn't an option for me.
Currently I have this beast of an application which simply can't be tested before installation. Ideally, I want to have the standard
So the question really is: How do I test an application consisting of lots of modules that use each other before I install it?