=head2 How do I find out if I'm running interactively or not?
-Good question. Sometimes C<-t STDIN> and C<-t STDOUT> can give clues,
-sometimes not.
-
- if (-t STDIN && -t STDOUT) {
- print "Now what? ";
- }
-
-On POSIX systems, you can test whether your own process group matches
-the current process group of your controlling terminal as follows:
+(contributed by brian d foy)
- use POSIX qw/getpgrp tcgetpgrp/;
+This is a difficult question to answer, and the best answer is
+only a guess. What do you really want to know? If you merely
+want to know if one of your filehandles is connected to a terminal,
+you can try the C<-t> file test:
- # Some POSIX systems, such as Linux, can be
- # without a /dev/tty at boot time.
- if (!open(TTY, "/dev/tty")) {
- print "no tty\n";
- } else {
- $tpgrp = tcgetpgrp(fileno(*TTY));
- $pgrp = getpgrp();
- if ($tpgrp == $pgrp) {
- print "foreground\n";
- } else {
- print "background\n";
+ if( -t STDOUT ) {
+ print "I'm connected to a terminal!\n";
+ }
+
+However, you might be out of luck if you expect that means there is a
+real person on the other side. With the C<Expect> module, another
+program can pretend to be a person. The program might even come close
+to passing the Turing test.
+
+The C<IO::Interactive> module does the best it can to give you an
+answer. Its C<is_interactive> function returns an output filehandle;
+that filehandle points to standard output if the module thinks the
+session is interactive. Otherwise, the filehandle is a null handle
+that simply discards the output:
+
+ use IO::Interactive;
+
+ print { is_interactive } "I might go to standard output!\n";
+
+This still doesn't guarantee that a real person is answering your
+prompts or reading your output.
+
+If you want to know how to handle automated testing for your
+distribution, you can check the environment. The CPAN
+Testers, for instance, set the value of C<AUTOMATED_TESTING>:
+
+ unless( $ENV{AUTOMATED_TESTING} ) {
+ print "Hello interactive tester!\n";
}
- }
=head2 How do I timeout a slow event?
=head2 How do I install a module from CPAN?
-The easiest way is to have a module also named CPAN do it for you.
-This module comes with perl version 5.004 and later.
-
- $ perl -MCPAN -e shell
-
- cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.59_54)
- ReadLine support enabled
-
- cpan> install Some::Module
-
-To manually install the CPAN module, or any well-behaved CPAN module
-for that matter, follow these steps:
-
-=over 4
-
-=item 1
-
-Unpack the source into a temporary area.
+(contributed by brian d foy)
-=item 2
+The easiest way is to have a module also named CPAN do it for you by using
+the C<cpan> command the comes with Perl. You can give it a list of modules
+to install:
- perl Makefile.PL
+ $ cpan IO::Interactive Getopt::Whatever
-=item 3
+If you prefer C<CPANPLUS>, it's just as easy:
- make
+ $ cpanp i IO::Interactive Getopt::Whatever
+
+If you want to install a distribution from the current directory, you can
+tell C<CPAN.pm> to install C<.> (the full stop):
-=item 4
+ $ cpan .
- make test
+See the documentation for either of those commands to see what else
+you can do.
-=item 5
+If you want to try to install a distribution by yourself, resolving
+all dependencies on your own, you follow one of two possible build
+paths.
- make install
+For distributions that use I<Makefile.PL>:
-=back
+ $ perl Makefile.PL
+ $ make test install
+
+For distributions that use I<Build.PL>:
-If your version of perl is compiled without dynamic loading, then you
-just need to replace step 3 (B<make>) with B<make perl> and you will
-get a new F<perl> binary with your extension linked in.
+ $ perl Build.PL
+ $ ./Build test
+ $ ./Build install
-See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> for more details on building extensions.
-See also the next question, "What's the difference between require
-and use?".
+Some distributions may need to link to libraries or other third-party
+code and their build and installation sequences may be more complicated.
+Check any I<README> or I<INSTALL> files that you may find.
=head2 What's the difference between require and use?
INSTALL_BASE tells these tools to put your modules into
F</mydir/perl/lib/perl5>. See L<How do I add a directory to my
include path (@INC) at runtime?> for details on how to run your newly
-installed moudles.
+installed modules.
There is one caveat with INSTALL_BASE, though, since it acts
differently than the PREFIX and LIB settings that older versions of
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff