How should I distribute a pre-built perl module, and what version of perl do I build for?
- by Mike Ellery
This is probably a multi-part question. Background: we have a native (c++) library that is part of our application and we have managed to use SWIG to generate a perl wrapper for this library. We'd now like to distribute this perl module as part of our application.
My first question - how should I distribute this module? Is there a standard way to package pre-built perl modules? I know there is ppm for the ActiveState distro, but I also need to distribute this for linux systems. I'm not even sure what files are required to distribute, but I'm guessing it's the pm and so files, at a minimum.
My next question - it looks like I might need to build my module project for each version of perl that I want to support. How do I know which perl versions I should build for? Are there any standard guidelines... or better yet, a way to build a package that will work with multiple versions of perl?
Sorry if my questions make no sense - I'm fairly new to the compiled module aspects of perl.
CLARIFICATION: the underlying compiled source is proprietary (closed source), so I can't just ship source code and the appropriate make artifacts for the package. Wish I could, but it's not going to happen in this case. Thus, I need a sane scheme for packaging prebuilt binary files for my module.