Tom Christiansen wrote pmtools-1.00 in 1999 or thereabouts to show (IIRC) how easy it was to develop a reasonably complete set of command-line tools for working with Perl modules and PODs. I went looking for a copy to use at Regenstrief Institute the other day, but link decay had retired the non-Linux version from the Web. (Hey, some of us develop on systems without Redhat Package Manager.) So, I have uploaded a .tar.gz copy of Tom Christiansen's original pmtools-1.00 to my CPAN directory, since pmtools-1.00 is still useful.
Still useful -- but not complete. Tom explicitly ignored some edge cases to simplify his development. A specific example is that when you need to lookup module and POD locations exactly the same way Perl does, you need to use code from Module:: and POD:: rather than pmtools. Personally, I'm going to look at using Module::Locate in pmtools, as I have used pmls the most.
Over time, I hope to continue pmtools development -- adding an automated test suite, using additional CPAN modules as appropriate, as well as whatever other changes the fertile minds of the CPAN contributors come up with. José Pedro Oliveira of the Fedora Project has already sent me several patches that I hope to integrate into a pmtools-1.10 release sometime this winter.
Long may pmtools live at its new home on CPAN!
Re:nice to see pmtools brought back from the dead
hfb on 2006-01-14T13:00:55
And, yes, it was 1999, February actually.
