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a tool for probing the operating system for existing libraries and tools, and downloading, building
and installing packages.  L<alienfile> is a recipe format for describing how to probe,
download, build and install a package.

=head2 How do I build a package that uses I<build system>

=head3 autoconf

Use the autoconf plugin (L<Alien::Build::Plugin::Build::Autoconf>).  If your package
provides a pkg-config C<.pc> file, then you can also use the PkgConfig plugin
(L<Alien::Build::Plugin::PkgConfig::Negotiate>).

 use alienfile
 plugin PkgConfig => 'libfoo';
 share {
   start_url => 'http://example.org/dist';
   plugin Download => (
     version => qr/libfoo-([0-9\.])\.tar\.gz$/,
   );
   plugin Extract => 'tar.gz';
   plugin 'Build::Autoconf';
 };

If you need to provide custom flags to configure, you can do that too:

 share {
   plugin 'Build::Autoconf';
   build [
     '%{configure} --disable-shared --enable-foo',
     '%{make}',
     '%{make} install',
   ];
 };

If your package requires GNU Make, use C<%{gmake}> instead of C<%{make}>.

=head3 autoconf without configure script

A number of Open Source projects are using autotools, but do not provide the
C<configure> script.  When alienizing these types of packages you have a
few choices:

=over 4

=item build configure using autotools

The Alien L<Alien::Autotools> is designed to provide autotools for building
such packages from source.  The advantage is that this is how the upstream
developers intend on having their package built.  The downside is that it
is also adds more prereqs to your Alien.  The silver lining is that if you
require this Alien in the C<share> block (as you should), then these prereqs
will only be pulled in during a share install when they are needed.

Please see the L<Alien::Autotools> documentation for specifics on how it
can be used in your L<alienfile>.

=item patch the package locally before build

You can use the L<alienfile/patch> directive to patch the alienized package
locally before building.  This can sometimes be challenging because Autotools
uses timestamps in order to decide what needs to be rebuilt, and patching
can sometimes confuse it into thinking more needs to be rebuilt than what
actually does.

=item build configure and tarball

You can also build the configure script during development of your alien,
generate the tarball and provide it somewhere like GitHub and use that
as the source instead of the original source.  This should usually be
a last resort if the other two methods prove too difficult.

=back

=head3 autoconf-like

If you see an error like this:

 Unknown option "--with-pic".

It is because the autoconf plugin uses the C<--with-pic> option by default, since
it makes sense most of the time, and autoconf usually ignores options that it does
not recognize.  Some autoconf style build systems fail when they see an option that
they do not recognize.  You can turn this behavior off for these packages:

 plugin 'Build::Autoconf' => (
   with_pic => 0,
 );

Another thing about the autoconf plugin is that it uses C<DESTDIR> to do a double
staged install.  If you see an error like "nothing was installed into destdir", that
means that your package does not support C<DESTDIR>.  You should instead use the
MSYS plugin and use a command sequence to do the build like this:

 share {
   plugin 'Build::MSYS';
   build [
     # explicitly running configure with "sh" will make sure that
     # it works on windows as well as UNIX.
     'sh configure --prefix=%{.install.prefix} --disable-shared',
     '%{make}',
     '%{make} install',
   ];
 };

=head3 CMake

There is an alien L<Alien::cmake3> that provides C<cmake> 3.x or better (It is preferred to the
older L<Alien::CMake>).  Though it is recommended that you use the C<cmake>
(L<Alien::Build::Plugin::Build::CMake>) plugin instead of using L<Alien::cmake3>.

 use alienfile;
 
 share {
   plugin 'Build::CMake';
   build [
     # this is the default build step, if you do not specify one.
     [ '%{cmake}',
         @{ meta->prop->{plugin_build_cmake}->{args} },
         # ... put extra cmake args here ...
         '.'
     ],