NAME
Perl::Critic::Policy::Modules::RequireVersionVar - Give every module a $VERSION
number.
AFFILIATION
This Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution.
DESCRIPTION
Every Perl file (modules, libraries, and programs) should have a package-scoped $VERSION
variable. The $VERSION
allows clients to insist on a particular revision of your file like this:
use SomeModule 2.4; #Only loads version 2.4
This Policy scans your file for any package variable named $VERSION
. I'm assuming that you are using strict
, so you'll have to declare it like one of these:
our $VERSION = 1.0611;
$MyPackage::VERSION = 1.061;
use vars qw($VERSION);
use version; our $VERSION = qv(1.0611);
Perl's version system does not recognize lexical variables such as
my $VERSION = 1.0611;
so they are not accepted by this policy.
A common practice is to use the $Revision$
keyword to automatically define the $VERSION
variable like this:
our ($VERSION) = '$Revision$' =~ m{ \$Revision: \s+ (\S+) }x;
CONFIGURATION
This Policy is not configurable except for the standard options.
NOTES
Conway recommends using the version
pragma instead of raw numbers or 'v-strings.' However, this Policy only insists that the $VERSION
be defined somehow. I may try to extend this in the future.
TO DO
Add check that $VERSION
is independently evaluatable. In particular, prohibit this:
our $VERSION = $Other::Module::VERSION;
This doesn't work because PAUSE and other tools literally copy your version declaration out of your module and evaluates it in isolation, at which point there's nothing in Other::Module
, and so the $VERSION
is undefined.
AUTHOR
Jeffrey Ryan Thalhammer <jeff@imaginative-software.com>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2005-2021 Imaginative Software Systems. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of this license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.