Installing

    > cpanm Minilla

You can install Minilla from CPAN.

Unlike dzil, you don't need to any setup. Minilla aggregates user name and e-mail address from your "~/.gitconfig" (You already set, isn't it?)

Making new distribution

    > minil new Dist-Name
    > cd Dist-Name/

At this point, you will have a really simple Dist-Name directory that contains your module file with as minimum boilerplate as possible.

minil done "git init" and "git add .". You need to commit it ASAP.

    > git commit -m 'initial import'

Now start writing your code, edit the docs, tests and manage CPAN dependencies with cpanfile.

    > $EDITOR lib/Dist/Name.pm t/dist-name.t cpanfile

Making the first release

    > git commit -a -m "Done initial version"

Minilla assumes you have a git remote setup so that you can push all your changes to. I recommend you to use either hub gem or App::ph to create a new github repository.

    # Use hub rubygem
    > hub create
    
    # Use App::ph
    > ph import

Now, make sure you have Changes file ready and have a new entry under "{{$NEXT}}", which will be expanded to the next version of your module.

    > $EDITOR Changes
    > minil test

Before you proceed to release step, please ensure the "~/.pause" file is configured correctly because Minilla uses CPAN::Uploader to upload your distribution to CPAN. You can specify the location of PAUSE configuration file on minil.toml if you want to. See "CONFIGURATION" in Minilla for further information.

    > minil release

And your first release is done. The release is tagged on git and all the changes automatically made are committed to git as well.

If this is your first conversion to Minilla and want to make sure you're not going to mess CPAN with a bad archive when something goes wrong, you can run the release command with FAKE_RELEASE environment variable. This will run all the other release process, except the UploadToCPAN step.

    > FAKE_RELEASE=1 minil release

Wait for PAUSE processing it and your module showing up on MetaCPAN in a few minutes. Congratulations!

Making a maintenance release

First, make sure all your code has been committed to git and there's no dirty files in the working directory.

Then make sure to edit Changes file and contain entries for the next release under "{{$NEXT}}". You don't need to commit the change to the Changes file, yet.

Now, make a release!

    > minil test
    > minil release

The release command will automatically bump the version for you - if you have 0.10, the next version will be 0.11 by default, but you will be prompted to confirm that version in case you need a major bump.

You can annotate any lines for which you would like the automatic version bump to be skipped by appending, `# No BumpVersion`.

This will update "Changes", "META.json" and bump $VERSION in your main module. These changes made by Minilla will be automatically committed, tagged and pushed to the remote.

Migrate by "minil migrate"

It can migrate your distribution automatically. If you can't do it, please report to Github issues <https://github.com/tokuhirom/Minilla/issues>.

Manually migrating from other build tools

First, move the prereq declaration from Makefile.PL or Build.PL to cpanfile.

The easiest way to convert existing dependencies to cpanfile is to use the command line tool mymeta-cpanfile, which is installed with Module::CPANfile. Run the configuration with Makefile.PL for the one last time, then run the mymeta-cpanfile command:

    > perl Makefile.PL
    > mymeta-cpanfile --no-configure
    requires 'DBI', '1.000';
    
    on test => sub {
        requires 'Test::More', '0.86';
    }
    
    ...

You can redirect the output to cpanfile if you like. It is important to pass --no-configure option here, since otherwise modules like ExtUtils::MakeMaker will be included. It is not required with Minilla setup, since Minilla knows which configuration tool (installer) to use and include them in META files upon the releases. You can leave that out from the cpanfile.

If you decide to manually construct new cpanfile, the format is mostly compatible to Module::Install's requirement DSL.

    # Makefile.PL
    test_requires 'Test::More', 0.90;
    requires 'Plack', '1.000';

becomes:

    # cpanfile
    test_requires 'Test::More', 0.90;
    requires 'Plack', '1.000';

which is exactly the same. If you use Module::Build or ExtUtils::MakeMaker, that will be more manual process, but basically the same thing. See cpanfile for the available syntax.

Remove boilerplate

Next, remove unnecessary boilerplate files.

    > git rm {Makefile,Build}.PL MANIFEST MANIFEST.SKIP README .shipit

Edit configurations

Edit .gitignore and add the following lines:

    /Dist-Name-*
    /.build
    !META.json

You're almost done, and your directory will look like:

    cpanfile
    lib/Dist/Name.pm
    t/...

"git add" the newly created files and commit it.

Make a new build

Now you're ready to make the first build.

    > minil build

and if it was successful, you get a build in a directory called "Dist-Name-v0.1.0" under your current directory. They can be later removed with "minil clean" command.

Also, new "Build.PL", "META.json" and "README.md" are added in your working directory for git-friendliness. "git add" them and commit it.

   > git add Build.PL META.json README.md && git commit -m "git stuff"

Now you're ready to roll a new release with Minilla. Before doing so, convert your "Changes" file format a little bit, and make sure you have a following header in the top:

  {{$NEXT}}

    - Change log entry for the next version

The "{{$NEXT}}" is a template variable that gets replaced with the version and date string, when you make a next release. This is almost the only change you're required to make in your code base.

Now, run the release command:

    > minil release

to make a new release, in the same way described above for a new Minilla setup. You can set "FAKE_RELEASE" environment variable if this is your first conversion and want to double check what happens, before uploading to CPAN.

When this is not your first release, the version number gets automatically bumped by Minilla, but you will be prompted if that is exactly the version you want, and if you want a major version up, you can specify to do so.