Find or build GNU m4

From a Perl script

use Alien::m4;
use Env qw( @PATH );
unshift @PATH, Alien::m4->bin_dir;  # m4 is now in your path

From Alien::Base Build.PL

use Alien:Base::ModuleBuild;
my $builder = Module::Build->new(
  ...
  alien_bin_requires => {
    'Alien::m4' => '0.07',
  },
  ...
);
$builder->create_build_script;

This package can be used by other CPAN modules that require GNU m4.

my $m4 = Alien::m4->exe;

Returns the "name" of m4. Normally this is m4, but on some platforms it may be gm4 or gnum4, or whatever is specified by $ENV{M4}.

%{m4}

Returns the name of the m4 command. Usually just m4.

Why GNU m4? Many Unixen come with BSD or other variants of m4 which are perfectly good. Unfortunately, the main use case for this module is Alien::Autotools and friends. Autoconf requires the GNU m4, probably for political reasons, possibly for technical reasons. If you are using one of these Unixen, don't despair, you can usually install the GNU version of m4 either by building from source or by installing a binary package, with either the name gm4 or gnum4, and this module will find it, and Alien::Autotools will be able to use it.

Graham Ollis [email protected]

This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Graham Ollis.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.