Oliver Gorwits

• Website: gorwits.me.uk/
• About: Computer Networks is my business, so Perl is my glue.

Recent Actions

• Commented on Thames Valley Perl Mongers are Meeting!
  Thanks Gabor for the suggestion - will do! :-)...
• Posted Thames Valley Perl Mongers are Meeting! to Oliver Gorwits

  A couple of weeks ago I asked for a show of hands to gather interest in restarting the Thames Valley Perl Mongers. The positive response we received is an encouraging sign that TVPMs are still out there (at least 30 of you) and interested in meeting up!

  The meeting will be held on …

• Posted Thames Valley Perl Mongers to Oliver Gorwits

  After being dormant for longer than I can remember, the Thames Valley Perl Mongers mail list woke up recently when someone[1] offered to host a meeting.

  I've put together a very short survey to work out how m…

• Commented on SNMP module vs Net::SNMP module
  Thanks for this interesting post. Have you looked at using SNMP::Info ? I am one of the maintainers so please do provide any feedback, good or bad, if you do try it out....
• Commented on Tie::Array::CSV is now more efficient on row ops
  Hi Joel, To answer the second point, yes David’s hunch is correct and Tie::File will slow down the larger the file is. It’s not so bad really, and you need a large file or to be frequently making updates, to...
• Posted A (very) short list of Dist::Zilla tips to Oliver Gorwits

  For App::fooapp type distributions then you might want the README etc generated from a specific file. Add this to dist.ini:

  main_module = bin/fooapp
  ; btw, semicolon leads a comment, in case you forgot how to do that
  

• Commented on Releasing trial/dev/beta versions with Dist::Zilla
  Thanks for the comment, but I think in turn you have misunderstood the motive of my post. I’m not concerned at all with the way PAUSE works (although thanks for the details, which I hope readers will find useful). Instead...
• Posted AutoCRUD revamped to Oliver Gorwits

  For a couple of years I’ve been planning to rip apart and put back together the guts of Catalyst::Plugin::AutoCRUD, to address limitations in the initial implementation. After changing job and moving house I’m…

• Commented on @dotCloud loves Catalyst apps: Up-and-running in 10-minutes (#Perl in the cloud, Part III)
  This is a terrific guide, thanks so much. I was able to deploy a demo of one of my modules to DotCloud really easily and quickly. Great stuff!...
• Posted Releasing trial/dev/beta versions with Dist::Zilla to Oliver Gorwits

  You might have stumbled across Dist::Zilla's --trial command line option in the past, and maybe even used it for a developer CPAN release. Its effect is (as I understand it) two-fold:

  • adds -TRIAL to the name of the dis…
• Commented on Why Dart is not the language of the future
  Programming Language Checklist...
• Commented on Best Laid Plans of Mice and Chisel
  My sympathies. I had a similar experience once, and you did the right thing by sharing. http://use.perl.org/~oliver/journal/37984 Yes, the laser-beam eyes are just punishing......
• Commented on local::libs for Dist Development
  My good friend Ray has taken this concept and applied some additional tweaks - well worth checking out his scripts instead of mine: https://github.com/ray1729/scripts/blob/master/new-profile https://github.com/ray1729/scripts/blob/master/switch-profile...
• Commented on Introducing this blog
  Looking forward to your posts. Thanks for sharing the output of your hobbies!...
• Posted local::libs for Dist Development to Oliver Gorwits

  Most of my distributions are on GitHub and built using Dist::Zilla. As the dependencies of each vary widely and I don’t want to muck up my workstation’s libraries, I set up a local::lib for each distribution’s…

• Commented on Perl on a Windows 7 laptop
  Mithaldu: Install Cygwin so you can call all the GNU stuff, like grep, from the normal windows command shell; install MSysGit using the second option, so only the git command is exposed; install AP/SP and you should be set. OK,...
• Commented on Perl on a Windows 7 laptop
  Ranguard - good video! Let me know how you get on with the other steps I describe. I’m going to try to make the process include fewer hacks, with the advice from Mithaldu. If we do get somewhere with an...
• Commented on Perl QA Hackathon 2011 - Day 1 "Am I Online?"
  Just for information and interest... Apple's iOS devices do a similar thing when connecting to wireless networks, to work out whether they've hit a Captive Portal. In short, they GET a predefined document from apple.com in the background. This blog...
• Commented on Perl on a Windows 7 laptop
  First, many thanks for your feedback Mithaldu :) Yes, what you describe would achieve much the same, so I might try it. I think the penny didn’t drop until too late for me that msys was an external component in...
• Posted Perl on a Windows 7 laptop to Oliver Gorwits

  I’ve been setting up my Windows 7 laptop to have as complete a Perl development environment as possible. I don’t have a choice about the operating system in this case, but I am used to the Unix-style environment, which I’d like to maintain.

  One option is to use ="h…

• Commented on Duplicating blog posts between blogs.perl.org and own blog?
  I have done this at my own blog using RSS/Atom syndication. The blog is Wordpress, and there's a plugin called FeedWordpress which pulls an RSS/Atom feed - in this case from the blogs.perl.org site. I'm very happy with the result...
• Posted Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author:: namespace to Oliver Gorwits

  Following the lead of Mike Doherty (DOHERTY) I've moved my own Dist::Zilla Author PluginBundle into a new namespace:

  Dist::Zil…

• Commented on Dist::Zilla::Plugin::MetaResourcesFromGit
  Replying to myself… Alternatively you could extend my plugin in exactly the same way as I’ve extended the original MetaResources plugin. Override the subroutine which parses the local git config file to get your specific repo details. The idea is...
• Commented on Dist::Zilla::Plugin::MetaResourcesFromGit
  @mpeters: Please re-read the last paragraph of my post :-) I’ve deliberately written the Plugin to be modified to support other Git repos and cloud services. All it needs is a patch, and perhaps an additional setting (e.g. “repo_flavour =...
• Posted Dist::Zilla::Plugin::MetaResourcesFromGit to Oliver Gorwits

  The CPAN META specification includes support for "resource" links to homepage, bug tracker, mail list, source code repository, and so on. These will appear on search.cpan.org if you

• Commented on My Dist::Zilla and git/GitHub workflow
  Fair point about using the CPAN release branch as the default and the issues it causes. I think we are stuck either way: either the contributor sends a patch against the “wrong” branch as you say, or I require them...
• Posted My Dist::Zilla and git/GitHub workflow to Oliver Gorwits

  There has been a bit of discussion recently on the #distzilla IRC channel about how people are integrating their CPAN distribution development with Git, and in particular some of the Dist::Zilla

• Commented on AskPerl: The Back-Compat Dilemma
  Thanks Mr Z, that’s a good summary of the situation and the examples have helped. I think when I complete the rewrite I’ll look at the programmers’ API and ask myself your question: “is this the same application?”...
• Commented on AskPerl: The Back-Compat Dilemma
  Many thanks, Ron (and everyone) - and it looks like you’re right I got a variety of replies :-) But it’s interesting to see the reasons people have for each strategy. I’ve not made my mind up yet…...
• Posted AskPerl: The Back-Compat Dilemma to Oliver Gorwits

  Gentle reader, I need your advice.

  Some years ago I created the Net::Appliance::Session Perl module. It allows the user to automate interactions with CLI-based networked devices (think routers, switches) - a sort of Expec…

Comment Threads

• Adam Kennedy commented on Perl QA Hackathon 2011 - Day 1 "Am I Online?"

  Oliver: It appears that Microsoft has a secret one as well. I should probably add support for both of those to the module, since they will be intentionally robust (as opposed to the current list, which is accidentally robust) :)

• robsimmons.myopenid.com commented on Why Dart is not the language of the future

  Oliver: I don't think "a PL should be either dynamic and untyped, or fully statically typed" is the right lesson to be drawn from this. There's a lot of interesting research that has been done or is being done on languages that integrate static and dynamic type systems, going by names like "gradual typing" or "hybrid typing." This work both shows a lot of promise and is mature enough that ideas could really be incorporated into a production language.

  Here, the issue is that they add something which has superficial resemblance to this work but then, because the "type" stuff doesn't ac…

• robsimmons.myopenid.com commented on Why Dart is not the language of the future

  Oops, that was a reply to frenchy, not Oliver.

• Dennis commented on Why Dart is not the language of the future

  "Oh my, factories? it's like 1997 and design patterns all over again!)"

  and then

  "Via some type decoration mechanism, one could have mixed weak and strong typing..."

  You mock the use of design patterns then you recommend one - "decoration mechanism"

  Which is it - they're useful or they're not ??

• Steven Haryanto commented on Comparison of Perl serialization modules

  They load faster than any other method since they use Perl's own parser and not one that needs be load, compiled and ran.

  Well, for startup speed yes. But it's surely faster to parse 1MB of JSON compared to 1MB of Perl code, since Perl parsing is more complex and slow.