Yes, I put out a new version of App::Info today. Well, a couple of versions, actually.

First of all, all the problems with the unit tests should be fixed. They actually aren’t all that comprehensive, but since the values returned form the various methods can vary, it didn’t make sense for them to be super precise. I have internal unit tests that are more precise, and they don’t execute when folks download App::Info from the CPAN.

But the major change in version 0.10 is the addition of error levels. Now when you construct an App::Info object, you can specify an error level that corresponds to a Carp function. Subclass writers (currently just your truly) then just have to use the error() method to record errors (although serious problems should probably just croak. Client code can specify how it wants to handle errors. The default is “carp”, but the CPAN unit tests, for example, use “silent”.

This functionality makes App::Info much more customizable for creating installation utilities, as the problems the subclasses run into – such as not being able to find a files they need, or not being able to parse a value from a file – can be set to be as verbose as necessary.

Next up, Matt Seargent suggests that I borrow from the AxKit Makefile.PL to make interrogating libiconv much more robust. Maybe in a couple of weeks. I’ve been back-burnering work that I really need to get done in order to work on this!

Originally published on use Perl;