Comparison to ExtUtil::Manifest

ExtUtils::Manifest is imperative, requires the existance of the actual MANIFEST file on disk, and requires that your current directory remains the same.

Module::Manifest treats the MANIFEST file as an object, can load a the file from anywhere on disk, and can run some of the same functionality without having to change your current directory context.

That said, note that Module::Manifest is aimed at reading and checking existing MANFIFEST files, rather than creating new ones.

new

  Module::Manifest->new( $manifest, $skip )

Creates a "Module::Manifest" object, which either parses the files referenced by the $manifest (for MANIFEST) and $skip (for MANIFEST.SKIP). If no parameters are specified, it creates an empty object.

Example code:

  my $manifest = Module::Manifest->new;
  my $manifest = Module::Manifest->new( $manifest );
  my $manifest = Module::Manifest->new( $manifest, $skip );

This method will return an appropriate Module::Manifest object or throws an exception on error.

open

  $manifest->open( $type => $filename )

Open and parse the file given by $filename, which may be a relative path. The available $type options are either: 'skip' or 'manifest'

Example code:

  $manifest->open( skip => 'MANIFEST.SKIP' );
  $manifest->open( manifest => 'MANIFEST' );

This method doesn't return anything, but may throw an exception on error.

parse

  $manifest->parse( $type => \@files )

Parse "\@files", which is an array reference containing a list of files or regular expression masks. The available $type options are either: 'skip' or 'manifest'

Example code:

  $manifest->parse( skip => [
       '\B\.svn\b',
       '^Build$',
       '\bMakefile$',
  ]);

This method doesn't return anything, but may throw an exception on error.

skipped

  $manifest->skipped( $filename )

Check if $filename matches any masks that should be skipped, given the regular expressions provided to either the "parse" or "open" methods.

Absolute path names must first be relativized and converted to a Unix-like path string by using the "normalize" method.

Example code:

  if ($manifest->skipped('Makefile.PL')) {
    # do stuff
  }

This method returns a boolean true or false value indicating whether the file path is skipped according the "skipfile".

normalize

  Module::Manifest->normalize( $path, $rel )
  $manifest->normalize( $path, $rel )

This method takes a given platform-specific path string and converts it to a Unix-style string compatible with the MANIFEST and MANIFEST.SKIP specifications.

Note that this method normalizes paths depending on the platform detected by $^O -- that is, Win32 style paths can only be normalized if the module is currently running under Win32.

By default, this method will relativize file paths to the current working directory (using File::Spec's "abs2rel" method without a $root). To disable this behaviour, set $rel to a false value.

Example code:

  # Useful for normalizing Win32-style paths
  my $normal = Module::Manifest->normalize('t\\test\\file');
  # Returns: t/test/file (ie, in Unix style for MANIFEST)

This returns a normalized version of the given path.

file

  $manifest->file

The "file" accessor returns the absolute path of the MANIFEST file that was loaded.

skipfile

  $manifest->skipfile

The "skipfile" accessor returns the absolute path of the MANIFEST.SKIP file that was loaded.

dir

  $manifest->dir

The "dir" accessor returns the path to the directory that contains the MANIFEST or skip file, and thus SHOULD be the root of the distribution.

files

  $manifest->files

The "files" method returns the (relative, unix-style) list of files within the manifest. In scalar context, returns the number of files in the manifest.

Example code:

  my @files = $manifest->files;

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