| Subject: | [Fwd: [PATCH] Changes to ExtUtils::Manifest documentation] |
| Date: | Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:23:44 -0700 |
| To: | Michael G Schwern via RT <bug-ExtUtils-Manifest [...] rt.cpan.org> |
| From: | Michael G Schwern <schwern [...] pobox.com> |
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [PATCH] Changes to ExtUtils::Manifest documentation
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:07:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: John P. Linderman <jpl@research.att.com>
To: perl5-porters@perl.org
CC: schwern@pobox.com
A few changes to the documentation for ExtUtils::Manifest.
The last few are the most important. Lines (comments or
otherwise) from the old MANIFEST are *not* preserved,
and shouldn't be. The old MANIFEST has no influence
on the new, and shouldn't have.
I was sorely tempted to change
Writes all files in and below
to
Writes the names of all files in and below
because it is the names, not the contents, that are written.
But the use of "files" to mean "names of files" is so
pervasive in the document that making it explicit (only) here
would probably create more confusion than clarity.
I'm not sure that it is a good idea to use UNIX commands to
explain module functionality, but if we're going to do it,
we ought to do it properly. We'd have to say something like
find . -type f -print > MANIFEST
because -print isn't a default operation in all versions of find,
and because directory names don't appear in the MANIFEST.
But even then it's misleading, because the find would include
a leading "./" on all names (which would not be such a bad
thing, since it would make it easier to exclude RCS directories
with a single "/RCS/" pattern instead of special-casing a
top-level RCS directory). All in all, I didn't find the
"find" analogy very helpful, so I removed it.
Patch follows -- jpl
--- Manifest.pm.orig 2007-07-18 06:26:38.000000000 -0400
+++ Manifest.pm 2007-07-18 07:36:03.000000000 -0400
@@ -71,16 +71,11 @@
mkmanifest();
Writes all files in and below the current directory to your F<MANIFEST>.
-It works similar to
- find . > MANIFEST
-
-All files that match any regular expression in a file F<MANIFEST.SKIP>
+All files that match any regular expression in file F<MANIFEST.SKIP>
(if it exists) are ignored.
-Any existing F<MANIFEST> file will be saved as F<MANIFEST.bak>. Lines
-from the old F<MANIFEST> file is preserved, including any comments
-that are found in the existing F<MANIFEST> file in the new one.
+Any existing F<MANIFEST> file will be saved as F<MANIFEST.bak>.
=cut