Dist::Z...thorDeps(3)

💖 Dist::Z...thorDeps(3) 💖

okay bestie, so this page lives in the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of the manual world, and it's titled Dist::Z...thorDeps(3). Yes the title has literal dots in it. We love a mysterious abbreviation era. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

Dist::Zilla::Util::AuthorDeps — the little utils module for listing out your distribution's author dependencies. 💅

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🎀 VERSION 🎀

version 6.040

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🦋 PERL VERSION 🦋

So the tea is: this module should work on any version of perl that's still getting updates from the Perl 5 Porters. Translation? Any perl released in like the last two to three years, max. Like, if the freshest release out there is v5.40, then bestie this works on both v5.40 and v5.38. Periodt. 🌈

And lowkey, yeah, it might work on older perls too, but there's no promise the minimum required version won't get bumped. They can raise that minimum for literally any reason, and no cap, there's no guarantee patches to lower it back down will even get accepted. So don't come for them. 💀

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✨ FUNCTIONS ✨

💜 extract_author_deps

my $prereqs = extract_author_deps($dist_root, $missing_only);

This one hands you back a reference to an array shaped like this:

[
  { $module1 => $ver1 },
  { $module2 => $ver2 },
  ...
]

Each entry in there is one of the likely author dependencies for the distribution sitting at the root path $dist_root. And if $missing_only is true, then any prereqs that look like they're already available under the perl you're currently running just... don't make the cut. They get left out. 🚫

okay now the real talk: this function is not really meant to be reliable, fr fr. It was undocumented and subject to change at literally any time, but some downstream libraries decided to use it anyway. Iconic of them honestly. 🙈 The author may provide a replacement at some point, and whenever that happens, this method will be deprecated and start issuing a warning. They documented this method only to provide this warning! So like... you've been warned, bestie. 👑

💜 format_author_deps

my $string = format_author_deps($prereqs, $include_versions);

Hand it a reference to an array in the format that "extract_author_deps" returns, and it gives you back a string like this:

Module::One
Module::Two
Module::Three

or, if $include_versions is true, it's giving:

Module::One = 1.00
Module::Two = 1.23
Module::Three = 8.910213

and yes, same energy here: this function is not really meant to be reliable either. It was undocumented and subject to change at any time, but downstream libraries chose to use it anyway. A replacement may show up at some point, at which point this method gets deprecated and starts warning at you. Documented here only to deliver that warning! 🫶

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Ricardo SIGNES 😏 <cpan@semiotic.systems>

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🌟 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 🌟

This software is copyright (c) 2026 by Ricardo SIGNES.

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

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! tysm for reading, mwah 🎀💖✨

this was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-10-19, and it's the Dist::Z...thorDeps(3) page — slay, ate, no crumbs left 💅🦋