This is a sister module of Parse::PMFile. This module parses local .pm files (and a META file if any) in a specific (current if not specified) directory, and returns a hash reference that represents "provides" information (with some extra meta data). This is almost the same as Module::Metadata does (which has been in Perl core since Perl 5.13.9). The main difference is the most of the code of this module is directly taken from the PAUSE code as of June 2013. If you need better compatibility to PAUSE, try this. If you need better performance, safety, or portability in general, Module::Metadata may be a better and handier option (Parse::PMFile (and thus Parse::LocalDistribution) actually evaluates code in the $VERSION line (in a Safe compartment), which may be problematic in some cases).

This module doesn't provide a feature to extract a distribution. If you are too lazy to implement it, CPAN::ParseDistribution may be another good option.