Menlo - A CPAN client

Menlo is a code name for cpanm 2.0, developed with the goal to replace cpanm and its backend with a more flexible, extensible and easier to use APIs.

Menlo is developed within cpanm git repository at the menlo branch. It keeps the developer test suite intact, which means all of the features implemented as of cpanm 1.7032 are supposed to work in Menlo with cpanm-menlo command line tool and its backend, Menlo::CLI::Compat.

Menlo::CLI::Compat started off as a copy of App::cpanminus::script, but will go under a big refactoring to extract all the bits out of it. Hopefully the end result will be just a shim and translation layer to interpret command line options.

A new client, possibly called menlo, and object oriented APIs will be added later in the development phase.

cpanm has been a popular choice of CPAN package installer for many developers, because it is lightweight, fast, and requires no configuration in most environments.

Meanwhile, the way cpanm has been implemented (one God class, and all modules are packaged in one script with fatpacker) makes it difficult to extend, or modify the behaviors at a runtime, unless you decide to fork the code or monkeypatch its hidden backend class.

cpanm also has no scriptable API or hook points, which means you have to work around its behavior by writing a shell wrapper, or parsing the output of its standard out or a build log file.

Menlo will keep the best aspects of cpanm, which is dependencies free, configuration free, lightweight and fast to install CPAN modules. At the same time, it's impelmented as a standard perl module, available on CPAN, and you can extend its behavior by either using its modular interfaces, or writing plugins to hook into its behaviors.

• Dependencies free? I see many prerequisites in Menlo.

  Right now, Menlo is in the development phase and is released as a standard perl module distribution, and has a few runtime dependencies. Actually most of these modules were consumed by cpanm as well, and they aren't new.

  When I decide it's ready for production and to replace cpanm, I'll make a fatpacked version of the script, which will bundle all the dependencies into one file, just like cpanm does.

• Is Menlo a new name for cpanm?

  Right now it's just a code name, but I'm comfortable calling this a new package name for cpanm 2's backend.

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa [email protected]

2010- Tatsuhiko Miyagawa

This software is licensed under the same terms as Perl.

cpanm