Joel Berger

Well its that time again. Thankfully the news is getting better once more!

Much of my time which is earmarked for Perl went to preparing for my YAPC talks. I’m glad they went so well; thanks to all of you who attended. I did even get a question about Alien::Base during one of the Q&As; I’m glad to know that people are interested.

The news this month hopefully is that Windows is passing tests! Or it should once some windows tests show up. It passes on the only windows dev box that I have access to.

Also I have begun work on the fixes for the Mac problem I described last month. I still would like to figure out some way to ensure that the linker flag -header-pad_max_install_names is passed rather than ensuring a really long build path is used. Perhaps using the Makefile ENV => Variables trick? Of course that assumes your project uses make and doesn’t clobber variables but appends to them.

Future plan:

This Mac problem has stymied me for a while too long, and I think it might be time (now that windows passes) to move forward. Certainly if the Mac host has the library installed Alien::Base should be able to detect it, the problem is only on the installation side and its being looked at. I really need to start getting some real-world feedback. I have heard from several people that they have projects in mind; I think that assuming the windows build tests do pass, its time to move to alpha phase.

During alpha testing I will want people to start creating their own Alien::MyLibrary modules. I especially need to know where the configuration scheme is not general enough. I do also need to know what is confusing in the documentation/examples so I can clear those up too. Of course during alpha testing I am making no promises that the API wont change, so don’t release your dependent Alien:: modules to CPAN just yet, but please do inform me if you make a new github project or branch using Alien::Base, I definitely want to follow those.

I know I have said it before but the official call to arms should come very soon. The released version will be 0.001. Still if you want to get started now, you have my blessing.

Finally I want to mention that my original grant proposal had mentioned being done by now. Obviously this isn’t the case. However, seeing as I am not being paid by the month (or any other timeframe for that matter), I would hope that seeing that the project is still alive and well should be enough to keep my grant open.

Cheers!