Dist::Zilla::Plugin::PkgVersion(3pm)

NAME
Dist::Zilla::Plugin::PkgVersion - add a $VERSION to your packages

VERSION
version 6.037

SYNOPSIS
in dist.ini

  [PkgVersion]

DESCRIPTION
This plugin will add lines like the following to each package in each Perl module or program (more or less) within the distribution:

  $MyModule::VERSION = '0.001';

or

  { our $VERSION = '0.001'; }

...where 0.001 is the version of the dist, and MyModule is the name of the package being given a version. (In other words, it always uses fully-qualified names to assign versions.)

It will skip any package declaration that includes a newline between the "package" keyword and the package name, like:

  package
    Foo::Bar;

This sort of declaration is also ignored by the CPAN toolchain, and is typically used when doing monkey patching or other tricky things.

PERL VERSION
This module should work on any version of perl still receiving updates from the Perl 5 Porters. This means it should work on any version of perl released in the last two to three years. (That is, if the most recently released version is v5.40, then this module should work on both v5.40 and v5.38.)

Although it may work on older versions of perl, no guarantee is made that the minimum required version will not be increased. The version may be increased for any reason, and there is no promise that patches will be accepted to lower the minimum required perl.

ATTRIBUTES

  die_on_existing_version
If true, then when PkgVersion sees an existing $VERSION assignment, it will throw an exception rather than skip the file. This attribute defaults to false.

  die_on_line_insertion
By default, PkgVersion looks for a blank line after each "package" statement. If it finds one, it inserts the $VERSION assignment on that line. If it doesn't, it will insert a new line, which means the shipped copy of the module will have different line numbers (off by one) than the source. If "die_on_line_insertion" is true, PkgVersion will raise an exception rather than insert a new line.

  use_package
This option, if true, will not insert an assignment to $VERSION but will replace the existing "package" declaration with one that includes a version like:

  package Module::Name 0.001;

  use_our
The idea here was to insert "{ our $VERSION = '0.001'; }" instead of "$Module::Name::VERSION = '0.001';". It turns out that this causes problems with some analyzers. Use of this feature is deprecated.

Something else will replace it in the future.

  use_begin
If true, the version assignment is wrapped in a BEGIN block. This may help in rare cases, such as when DynaLoader has to be called at BEGIN time, and requires VERSION. This option should be needed rarely.

Also note that assigning to $VERSION before the module has finished compiling can lead to confused behavior with attempts to determine whether a module was successfully loaded on perl v5.8.

  finder
This is the name of a FileFinder for finding modules to edit. The default value is ":InstallModules" and ":ExecFiles"; this option can be used more than once.

Other predefined finders are listed in "default_finders" in Dist::Zilla::Role::FileFinderUser. You can define your own with the [FileFinder::ByName] and [FileFinder::Filter] plugins.

SEE ALSO
Core Dist::Zilla plugins: PodVersion, AutoVersion, NextRelease.

Other Dist::Zilla plugins: OurPkgVersion inserts version numbers using "our $VERSION = '...';" and without changing line numbers

AUTHOR
Ricardo SIGNES 😏 <cpan@semiotic.systems>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2026 by Ricardo SIGNES.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.