Source: libmodule-install-authorrequires-perl Section: perl Priority: optional Build-Depends: devscripts, cdbs (>= 0.4.73~), perl, debhelper, dh-buildinfo, libmodule-install-perl Maintainer: Debian Perl Group Uploaders: Jonas Smedegaard Standards-Version: 3.9.3 Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-perl/packages/libmodule-install-authorrequires-perl Vcs-Browser: http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-perl/packages/libmodule-install-authorrequires-perl.git Homepage: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Module-Install-AuthorRequires/ Package: libmodule-install-authorrequires-perl Architecture: all Depends: ${cdbs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, ${perl:Depends} Recommends: ${cdbs:Recommends} Suggests: ${cdbs:Suggests} Description: declare author-only dependencies Modules often have optional requirements, for example dependencies that are useful for (optional) tests, but not required for the module to work properly. . Usually you want all developers of a project to have these optional modules installed. However, simply telling everyone or printing diagnostic messages if optional dependencies are missing often isn't enough to make sure all authors have all optional modules installed. . Module::Install already has a way of detecting an author environment, so an easy way to achieve the above would be something like: . if ($Module::Install::AUTHOR) { requires 'Some::Module'; requires 'Another::Module' => '0.42'; } . Unfortunately, that'll also make the optional dependencies show up in the distributions "META.yml" file, which is obviously wrong, as they aren't actually hard requirements. . Working that around requires a considerable amount of non-trivial Makefile.PL hackery, or simply using Module::Install::AuthorRequires's "author_requires" command.