Action basics

Actions are the cornerstone of the ExtUtils::Builder framework. It is a flexible abstraction around steps of a process, it can be a piece of perl code or an external command.

Nodes

Nodes describe how a target should be created. Every node has an unordered set of zero or more dependencies that must be build (and must be up-to-date) before the target is build. It also has a list of actions to perform (in order) to create (or recreate) the target file. Essentially, a Node is equivalent to entry in a Makefile.

Plans

Plans are the equivalent of a (piece of a) Makefile. They are a bunch of nodes that should interconnect.

The "run" method will create the given target and all its dependencies in a topological order much like "make". It will check which steps are necessary and skip the ones which are not. Alternatively it can be serialized to a JSON-compatible datastructure (and later deserialized) using ExtUtils::Builder::Serializer, or even integrated into ExtUtils::MakeMaker using ExtUtils::Builder::MakeMaker.

Planners

A Planner is an object used to create Plans. At the base level it allows you to add nodes or pattern matches/substitutions, but usually one would load extensions that add higher level methods to the planner (e.g. "compile"). Planners support scopes: child planners that share the build plan but contain extra helper methods. It also supports DSL scripts: these are perl scripts that support calling the planner's methods as functions for easy customization of build plans.