MakeMaker: make test vs make dist

Question

Let's say I've created a directory using module-starter, and written several additional modules and tests since.

make test would then run all tests in t/ on all modules in lib/, however make dist will only pack files mentioned in MANIFEST into tar.gz.

So I got burnt recently by running make test && make dist and still getting a broken package.

My question is: am I missing something, or this can be reported as a minor bug in MakeMaker? (Which Makefile.PL seems to rely upon).

I'm missing the bug? Do you mean you shouldn't have to update your manifest? How would it automagically know what you wanted to add? — Brian Roach, Mar 18 '11 at 19:18
I wouldn't mind having it the other way around: skip files NOT in manifest when testing. This is hard to overlook, and no magic required. — Dallaylaen, Mar 18 '11 at 19:33
You should consider using [Dist::Zilla](http://dzil.org). One of its standard plugins is TestRelease, which unpacks the tarball and runs tests using that, to ensure that the distribution you're releasing really does pass its tests. — cjm, Mar 18 '11 at 21:02

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '11 at 15:29

5

You can use make disttest which will create a distribution directory from the MANIFEST (equivalent to make distdir) and run make test in that. This guarantees you're running against the same files as will be shipped.

I also rebuild my MANIFEST as part of making a release, which requires keeping your MANIFEST.SKIP up to date.

All in all, my basic release script is:

perl Makefile.PL
make manifest
make disttest
make dist

answered Mar 19 '11 at 15:29

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`make disttest` is indeed how I'd like `make test` to work, thanks. – Dallaylaen Apr 08 '11 at 20:17

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 18 '11 at 19:16

Run make distcheck before you release your package. This will warn you about anything potentially missing from your MANIFEST.

Some modules generate files during the build process (including under lib/), so files missing in the MANIFEST shouldn't necessarily cause make dist to fail.

MakeMaker: make test vs make dist

2 Answers2