Special notes on bundling¶

The "inc::latest" module creates bundled directories based on the packlist file of an installed distribution. Even though "inc::latest" takes module name arguments, it is better to think of it as bundling and making available entire distributions. When a module is loaded through "inc::latest", it looks in all bundled distributions in "inc/" for a newer module than can be found in the existing @INC array.

Thus, the module-name provided should usually be the "top-level" module name of a distribution, though this is not strictly required. For example, Module::Build has a number of heuristics to map module names to packlists, allowing users to do things like this:

  use inc::latest 'Devel::AssertOS::Unix';

even though Devel::AssertOS::Unix is contained within the Devel-CheckOS distribution.

At the current time, packlists are required. Thus, bundling dual-core modules may require a 'forced install' over versions in the latest version of perl in order to create the necessary packlist for bundling.

Author-mode¶

You are in author-mode inc::latest if any of the Author-mode methods are available. For example:

  if ( inc::latest->can('write') ) {
    inc::latest->write('inc');
  }

loaded_modules()

  my @list = inc::latest->loaded_modules;
    

This takes no arguments and always returns a list of module names requested for loading via "use inc::latest 'MODULE'", regardless of whether the load was successful or not.

write()

  inc::latest->write( 'inc' );
    

This writes the bundled version of inc::latest to the directory name given as an argument. It almost all cases, it should be '"inc"'.

bundle_module()

  for my $mod ( inc::latest->loaded_modules ) {
    inc::latest->bundle_module($mod, $dir);
  }
    

If $mod corresponds to a packlist, then this function creates a specially-named directory in $dir and copies all .pm files from the modlist to the new directory (which almost always should just be 'inc'). For example, if Foo::Bar is the name of the module, and $dir is 'inc', then the directory would be 'inc/inc_Foo-Bar' and contain files like this:

  inc/inc_Foo-Bar/Foo/Bar.pm
    

Currently, $mod must have a packlist. If this is not the case (e.g. for a dual-core module), then the bundling will fail. You may be able to create a packlist by forced installing the module on top of the version that came with core Perl.

As bundled in inc/¶

All methods are private. Only the "import" method is public.