CONTENTS

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• METHODS
  • Preloaded methods
  • SelfLoaded methods
  • Methods to actually produce chunks of text for the Makefile
• SEE ALSO

#NAME

ExtUtils::MM_Unix - methods used by ExtUtils::MakeMaker

#SYNOPSIS

require ExtUtils::MM_Unix;

#DESCRIPTION

The methods provided by this package are designed to be used in conjunction with ExtUtils::MakeMaker. When MakeMaker writes a Makefile, it creates one or more objects that inherit their methods from a package MM. MM itself doesn't provide any methods, but it ISA ExtUtils::MM_Unix class. The inheritance tree of MM lets operating specific packages take the responsibility for all the methods provided by MM_Unix. We are trying to reduce the number of the necessary overrides by defining rather primitive operations within ExtUtils::MM_Unix.

If you are going to write a platform specific MM package, please try to limit the necessary overrides to primitive methods, and if it is not possible to do so, let's work out how to achieve that gain.

If you are overriding any of these methods in your Makefile.PL (in the MY class), please report that to the makemaker mailing list. We are trying to minimize the necessary method overrides and switch to data driven Makefile.PLs wherever possible. In the long run less methods will be overridable via the MY class.

#METHODS

The following description of methods is still under development. Please refer to the code for not suitably documented sections and complain loudly to the makemaker mailing list.

Not all of the methods below are overridable in a Makefile.PL. Overridable methods are marked as (o). All methods are overridable by a platform specific MM_*.pm file (See ExtUtils::MM_VMS) and ExtUtils::MM_OS2).

#Preloaded methods

#canonpath

No physical check on the filesystem, but a logical cleanup of a path. On UNIX eliminated successive slashes and successive "/.".

#catdir

Concatenate two or more directory names to form a complete path ending with a directory. But remove the trailing slash from the resulting string, because it doesn't look good, isn't necessary and confuses OS2. Of course, if this is the root directory, don't cut off the trailing slash :-)

#catfile

Concatenate one or more directory names and a filename to form a complete path ending with a filename

#curdir

Returns a string representing of the current directory. "." on UNIX.

#rootdir

Returns a string representing of the root directory. "/" on UNIX.

#updir

Returns a string representing of the parent directory. ".." on UNIX.

#SelfLoaded methods

#c_o (o)

Defines the suffix rules to compile different flavors of C files to object files.

#cflags (o)

Does very much the same as the cflags script in the perl distribution. It doesn't return the whole compiler command line, but initializes all of its parts. The const_cccmd method then actually returns the definition of the CCCMD macro which uses these parts.

#clean (o)

Defines the clean target.

#const_cccmd (o)

Returns the full compiler call for C programs and stores the definition in CONST_CCCMD.

#const_config (o)

Defines a couple of constants in the Makefile that are imported from %Config.

#const_loadlibs (o)

Defines EXTRALIBS, LDLOADLIBS, BSLOADLIBS, LD_RUN_PATH. See ExtUtils::Liblist for details.

#constants (o)

Initializes lots of constants and .SUFFIXES and .PHONY

#depend (o)

Same as macro for the depend attribute.

#dir_target (o)

Takes an array of directories that need to exist and returns a Makefile entry for a .exists file in these directories. Returns nothing, if the entry has already been processed. We're helpless though, if the same directory comes as $(FOO) _and_ as "bar". Both of them get an entry, that's why we use "::".

#