Chapter 4

Listing 4 9. MANIFEST Generated by h2xs.

Changes

Makefile.PL

MANIFEST

Counter.pm

README

test.pl

Exploring the Distribution

Like most things Perl, there's more than one way to build a module distribution. 

The module skeleton generated by h2xs is designed to be simple and generic 

enough to be useful for all sorts of modules. It's a great place to start, but there are 

some modifications that will be helpful for you to know. I'll also explore some of 

the useful things that the build system can do for you without any modifications 

at all.

Testing

The test script generated by h2xs is simply a Perl script that uses the Test module to 

run tests. Adding a new test is very simple just add a few lines to the script that 

call ok() and update the plan number accordingly. This works well for simple 

modules, but a complicated module that uses this system will end up with a very 

large test script. Also, some modules contain features that are difficult to test in a 

single script.

Fortunately, ExtUtils::MakeMaker allows you to have as many separate test 

scripts as you need. To use this functionality, create a directory in your module dis 

tribution called t. Then create your test files, ending with the extension .t, inside 

this directory. For example, a typical t directory might contain the files 01load.t,

02basic.t, and 03errors.t. The resulting directory structure is shown in Figure 4 2. 

Using this layout, make test looks a little different.

$ make test

PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/local/bin/perl  Iblib/arch  Iblib/lib \

 I/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/i686 linux  I/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1 \

 e  use Test::Harness qw(&runtests $verbose); $verbose=0; runtests @ARGV;  t/*.t

t/01load......ok

t/02basic.....ok

t/03errors....ok

All tests successful.

Files=3, Tests=6,  0 wallclock secs ( 0.20 cusr +  0.04 csys =  0.24 CPU)

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