This is the README file for Software::Packager, the Perl module for creation of software installation packages. This is Alpha software it may or may not do anything. The API is subject to change. This module comes with NO WARRANTY. INSTALLATION Software::Packager uses the standard perl module install process perl Makefile.PL make make test [TEST_VERBOSE=1] (optional but recommended) make install DESCRIPTION If you release software for a range of platforms then this is the module for you. Software::Packager is the base module for suite of Perl modules providing a common interface for the creation of platform specific software installation packagers. From version 0.05 you also need to install the Software::Packager module for the platform you require. This module does not do the packaging of the software but is merely a wrapper around the various software packaging tools already provided with various operating systems. The file example/example.pl contains an example of how this module can be used. WHY ANOTHER PACKAGE CREATION SYSTEM? There so many different ways to create installation media these days. There are platform specific formats for all the UNIX operating systems and then there are different formats for different distributions of the same operating system. If you take Linux for example. RedHat has RPM (RedHat Package Manager) Debian has dpkg (Debian Package Manager?) Slackware has yet another format. No doubt there are more. Microsoft Windows is no better. So as a developer how so you create software and install in on many platforms? Like many companies do you could create you own installation system. That sounds fine. Go ahead and write one in Java, and you can create installation media for any platform that supports Java. Sounds like a good idea doesn't it? Wrong. By doing this you just make a big job for yourself and the world a harder place to work in for developers like you and me. What should you do as a developer? you should create you installation media in the format that the various operating systems use. This until now, ment creating scripts for every packaging system that you were going to release on to create the media. With Software::Packager you only need to create one script and run it on the various operating systems that you want to release your software on. It's as easy as that. Granted you might need to do things slightly different on each platform but these that is only necessary if you are doing advanced tasks. In time these may even be removed as Software::Packager evolves. HOMEPAGE http://bernard.gondwana.com.au AUTHOR R Bernard Davison <rbdavison@cpan.org> COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2001 R Bernard Davison. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.