| Subject: | Set PERL_AUTOINSTALL=--defaultdeps when CPAN is configured to follow deps |
Module::AutoInstall, people hate it because it stops automated installs
dead in their tracks. It duplicates what CPAN already does. It either
doesn't seem smart enough to know its running under CPAN, or there's
lots of old versions of MI floating around out there.
Fortunately there's the PERL_AUTOINSTALL environment variable which lets
you control its dependencies. Setting --defaultdeps will make MAI
install the default deps without user input. Unfortunately very few
people know about this. In the spirit of CPAN's "follow" prerequisites
policy, it would make a lot of people happy if CPAN set PERL_AUTOINSTALL
to --defaultdeps when the follow prereq policy is set. Similarly,
"ignore" can set --skipdeps (though looking at the docs it may be a bit
too smart for its own good).
There's the side question of what to do if PERL_AUTOINSTALL is already
set. The simplest is to just leave it alone and assume the user knows
what they're doing. Alternatively, CPAN could append to the existing
variable.