VERSION

version 0.15

SYNOPSIS

use FFI::CheckLib;

check_lib_or_exit( lib => 'jpeg', symbol => 'jinit_memory_mgr' );
check_lib_or_exit( lib => [ 'iconv', 'jpeg' ] );

# or prompt for path to library and then:
print "where to find jpeg library: ";
my $path = <STDIN>;
check_lib_or_exit( lib => 'jpeg', libpath => $path );

DESCRIPTION

This module checks whether a particular dynamic library is available for FFI to use. It is modeled heavily on Devel::CheckLib, but will find dynamic libraries even when development packages are not installed. It also provides a find_lib function that will return the full path to the found dynamic library, which can be feed directly into FFI::Platypus or FFI::Raw.

Although intended mainly for FFI modules via FFI::Platypus and similar, this module does not actually use any FFI to do its detection and probing. This modules does not have any non-core dependencies on Perls 5.8-5.18. On Perl 5.20 and newer it has a configure, build and test dependency on Module::Build.

FUNCTIONS

All of these take the same named parameters and are exported by default.

find_lib

This will return a list of dynamic libraries, or empty list if none were found.

[version 0.05]

If called in scalar context it will return the first library found.

lib

Must be either a string with the name of a single library or a reference to an array of strings of library names. Depending on your platform, "CheckLib" will prepend "lib" or append ".dll" or ".so" when searching.

[version 0.11]

As a special case, if "*" is specified then any libs found will match.

libpath

A string or array of additional paths to search for libraries.

systempath

[version 0.11]

A string or array of system paths to search for instead of letting FFI::CheckLib determine the system path. You can set this to "[]" in order to not search any system paths.

symbol

A string or a list of symbol names that must be found.

verify

A code reference used to verify a library really is the one that you want. It should take two arguments, which is the name of the library and the full path to the library pathname. It should return true if it is acceptable, and false otherwise. You can use this in conjunction with FFI::Platypus to determine if it is going to meet your needs. Example:

 use FFI::CheckLib;
 use FFI::Platypus;
 
 my($lib) = find_lib(
   name => 'foo',
   verify => sub {
     my($name, $libpath) = @_;
     
     my $ffi = FFI::Platypus->new;
     $ffi->lib($libpath);
     
     my $f = $ffi->function('foo_version', [] => 'int');
     
     return $f->call() >= 500; # we accept version 500 or better
   },
 );

recursive

[version 0.11]

Recursively search for libraries in any non-system paths (those provided via "libpath" above).

assert_lib

This behaves exactly the same as find_lib, except that instead of returning empty list of failure it throws an exception.

check_lib_or_exit

This behaves exactly the same as assert_lib, except that instead of dying, it warns (with exactly the same error message) and exists. This is intended for use in "Makefile.PL" or "Build.PL"

find_lib_or_exit

[version 0.05]

This behaves exactly the same as find_lib, except that if the library is not found, it will call exit with an appropriate diagnostic.

find_lib_or_die

[version 0.06]

This behaves exactly the same as find_lib, except that if the library is not found, it will die with an appropriate diagnostic.

check_lib

This behaves exactly the same as find_lib, except that it returns true (1) on finding the appropriate libraries or false (0) otherwise.

AUTHOR

Author: Graham Ollis <[email protected]>

Contributors:

Bakkiaraj Murugesan (bakkiaraj)

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2014 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.