[OE-core] how to add new perl modules to stock OE build?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  (followup to earlier thread, but now that i have a better idea of
what i'm trying to do, i decided to start a new thread that should be
more focused. apologies for dragging this out just a bit longer.)

  as i posted earlier, i want to add some perl modules to a basic poky
build; in this case, building core-image-minimal for qemuppc, if that
makes any difference.

  initially, i went hunting for existing recipes for the modules i
wanted (meta-perl, meta-cpan, ...), until i noticed that the perl
recipe directory contains a "perl-rdepends_5.22.1.inc" file, which as
i read it defines all of the modules to be incorporated into the
"perl-modules" package, so that *appears* to be the solution -- just
extend the set of modules to be built by extending the contents of
that file.

  so, first, is that the recommended (or even correct) approach? as an
example, i want to add Text::Template; would that involve adding lines
similar to the following?

 RDEPENDS_${PN}-module-text-template += "${PN}-module-exporter"
 RDEPENDS_${PN}-module-text-template += "${PN}-module-strict"
 RDEPENDS_${PN}-module-text-template += "${PN}-module-vars"

(not saying that would be the *complete* set of lines for that module,
only that that looks like a starting point.)

  next, if that's a valid approach, i can see the code near the bottom
of perl_5.22.1.bb that appears to be taking care of creating the
perl-modules package:

===== start =====

# Create a perl-modules package recommending all the other perl
# packages (actually the non modules packages and not created too)
ALLOW_EMPTY_perl-modules = "1"
PACKAGES_append = " perl-modules "

PACKAGESPLITFUNCS_prepend = "split_perl_packages "

python split_perl_packages () {
    libdir = d.expand('${libdir}/perl/${PV}')
    do_split_packages(d, libdir, 'auto/([^.]*)/[^/]*\.(so|ld|ix|al)', 'perl-module-%s', 'perl module %s', recursive=True, match_path=True, prepend=False)
    do_split_packages(d, libdir, 'Module/([^\/]*)\.pm', 'perl-module-%s', 'perl module %s', recursive=True, allow_dirs=False, match_path=True, prepend=False)
    do_split_packages(d, libdir, 'Module/([^\/]*)/.*', 'perl-module-%s', 'perl module %s', recursive=True, allow_dirs=False, match_path=True, prepend=False)
    do_split_packages(d, libdir, '(^(?!(CPAN\/|CPANPLUS\/|Module\/|unicore\/|auto\/)[^\/]).*)\.(pm|pl|e2x)', 'perl-module-%s', 'perl module %s', recursive=True, allow_dirs=False, match_path=True, prepend=False)

    # perl-modules should recommend every perl module, and only the
    # modules. Don't attempt to use the result of do_split_packages() as some
    # modules are manually split (eg. perl-module-unicore).
    packages = filter(lambda p: 'perl-module-' in p, d.getVar('PACKAGES', True).split())
    d.setVar(d.expand("RRECOMMENDS_${PN}-modules"), ' '.join(packages))
}

PACKAGES_DYNAMIC += "^perl-module-.*"

===== end =====

  i sort of see what that's doing  -- don't understand it completely,
but i'm assuming it's processing the contents of that .inc file to
list all modules to be built and incorporated into the "perl-modules"
dynamic package.

  is this even remotely the right approach? is there an OE/YP manual
that explains this somewhere? thanks.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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