% podwebserver You can now point your browser at http://localhost:8020/
Run podwebserver -h for a list of runtime options.
But do consider whether you're revealing anything by basically showing off what versions of modules you've got installed; and also consider whether you could be revealing any proprietary or in-house module documentation.
And also consider that this exposes the documentation of modules (i.e., any Perl files that at all look like modules) in your @INC dirs --- and your @INC probably contains ``.''! If your current working directory could contain modules whose Pod you don't want anyone to see, then you could do two things: The cheap and easy way is to just chdir to an uninteresting directory:
mkdir ~/.empty; cd ~/.empty; podwebserver
The more careful approach is to run podwebserver under perl in -T (taint) mode (as explained in perlsec), and to explicitly specify what extra directories you want in @INC, like so:
perl -T -Isomepath -Imaybesomeotherpath -S podwebserver
You can also use the -I trick (that's a capital ``igh'', not a lowercase ``ell'') to add dirs to @INC even if you're not using -T. For example:
perl -I/that/thar/Module-Stuff-0.12/lib -S podwebserver
An alternate approach is to use your shell's environment-setting commands to alter PERL5LIB or PERLLIB before starting podwebserver.
These -T and -I switches are explained in perlrun. But I'll note in passing that you'll likely need to do this to get your PERLLIB environment variable to be in @INC...
perl -T -I$PERLLIB -S podwebserver
(Or replacing that with PERL5LIB, if that's what you use.)
ON INDEXING '.' IN @INC
ON INDEXING '.' IN @INC
Pod::Webserver uses the module Pod::Simple::Search to build the index page you see at http://yourservername:8020/ (or whatever port you choose instead of 8020). That module's indexer has one notable DWIM feature: it reads over @INC, except that it skips the ``.'' in @INC. But you can work around this by expressing the current directory in some other way than as just the single literal period --- either as some more roundabout way, like so:
perl -I./. -S podwebserver
Or by just expressing the current directory absolutely:
perl -I`pwd` -S podwebserver
Note that even when ``.'' isn't indexed, the Pod in files under it are still accessible --- just as if you'd typed ``perldoc whatever'' and got the Pod in ./whatever.pl
See also Pod::Perldoc and <http://search.cpan.org/>
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Maintained by: Allison Randal "allison@perl.org"