NAME

       Module::Starter::Plugin -- how Module::Starter plugins work

VERSION

       version 1.77

DESCRIPTION

       This document is a guide to writing plugins for Module::Starter.  Currently, as is
       evident, it isn't very comprehensive.  It should provide enough information for writing
       effective plugins, though.  After all, Module::Starter's guts are nice and simple.

   "Module::Starter->import"
       Module::Starter provides an import method, the arguments to which are plugins, in the
       order in which they should be loaded.  If no plugins are given, Module::Starter::Simple
       (and only Module::Starter::Simple) is loaded.

       By default, the given modules are required and arranged in an is-a chain.  That is,
       Module::Starter subclasses the last plugin given, which subclasses the second-to-last, up
       to the first plugin given, which is the base class.  If a plugin provides a "load_plugins"
       method, however, the remaining plugins to be loaded are passed to that method, which is
       responsible for loading the rest of the plugins.

       This architecture suggests two kinds of plugins:

   engine plugins
       An engine is a plugin that stands alone, implementing the public "create_distro" method
       and all the functionality required to carry out that implementation.  The only engine
       included with Module::Starter is Module::Starter::Simple, and I'm not sure any more will
       be seen in the wild any time soon.

   plain old plugins
       Other plugins are designed to subclass an engine and alter its behavior, just as a normal
       subclass alters its parent class's.  These plugins may add features to Module::Starter
       engines, or may just provide general APIs for other plugins to exploit (like
       Module::Starter::Plugin::Template.)

       The template plugin is a simple example of a plugin that alters an engine to accept
       further plugins.  Other plugins like template will probably be written in the near future,
       and plugins that exploit the API provided by Module::Starter::Plugin::Template will be
       available on the CPAN.

AUTHOR

       Ricardo SIGNES "<rjbs at cpan.org>"

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2005, Ricardo SIGNES.  All Rights Reserved.

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