#NAME

Perl::Critic::Policy::Modules::RequireVersionVar - Give every module a $VERSION number.

#AFFILIATION

This Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution.

#DESCRIPTION

Every Perl file (modules, libraries, and programs) should have a package-scoped $VERSION variable. The $VERSION allows clients to insist on a particular revision of your file like this:

use SomeModule 2.4;  #Only loads version 2.4

This Policy scans your file for any package variable named $VERSION. I'm assuming that you are using strict, so you'll have to declare it like one of these:

our $VERSION = 1.0611;
$MyPackage::VERSION = 1.061;
use vars qw($VERSION);
use version; our $VERSION = qv(1.0611);

Perl's version system does not recognize lexical variables such as

my $VERSION = 1.0611;

so they are not accepted by this policy.

A common practice is to use the $Revision$ keyword to automatically define the $VERSION variable like this:

our ($VERSION) = '$Revision$' =~ m{ \$Revision: \s+ (\S+) }x;

#CONFIGURATION

This Policy is not configurable except for the standard options.

#NOTES

Conway recommends using the version pragma instead of raw numbers or 'v-strings.' However, this Policy only insists that the $VERSION be defined somehow. I may try to extend this in the future.

#TO DO

Add check that $VERSION is independently evaluatable. In particular, prohibit this:

our $VERSION = $Other::Module::VERSION;

This doesn't work because PAUSE and other tools literally copy your version declaration out of your module and evaluates it in isolation, at which point there's nothing in Other::Module, and so the $VERSION is undefined.

#AUTHOR

Jeffrey Ryan Thalhammer <jeff@imaginative-software.com>

#COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of this license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

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