=head1 TITLE

Perl modules should be built with a Perl make program

=head1 VERSION

  Maintainer: Mark Leighton Fisher <fisherm@tce.com>
  Date: 29 Sept 2000
  Mailing List: perl6-stdlib@perl.org
  Number: 349
  Version: 1
  Status: Developing

=head1 ABSTRACT

Everything but the 'perl' binary should be built with a make
program written in Perl.

=head1 DESCRIPTION

There are inconsistencies between the versions of 'make'.
We already have (from what I've gathered) quite reasonable
make-like programs in Perl (pmake and cons).  Using one
tool written in Perl would make the build process both
more reliable and more consistent by reducing the number
of system-dependent entities in the build process.

If a cons-like tool is chosen there is also the advantage
of using a tool better able to handle complex builds.

=head1 IMPLEMENTATION

Probably either pmake or cons should be chosen rather than
writing a tool from scratch, although virtual targets (targets
like 'install' or 'all') should be added to cons before it
is used in the Perl module build process.

There should be a module corresponding to ExtUtils::MakeMaker
that generates makefiles for the new Perl make-like program.

=head1 REFERENCES

ExtUtils::MakeMaker