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

       Ricardo SIGNES "<rjbs at cpan.org>"

       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.

perl v5.36.0                                       2022-10-16                       Module::Starter::Plugin(3pm)

       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:

   engineplugins
       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.

   plainoldplugins
       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.

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

       version 1.77