On part of Dist::Zilla that I do find intriguing is the way it does its testing. As I discovered in my last post some things only work at release time and that is true of testing as well. Dist:Zilla take the newer extended testing model as a default. In the old days we would call these optional tests and usually hide them in a folder someplace, but the more common usage today is to put them in an '\xt' directory on their own.
One can see the logic behind this as I remember a few times having to do a force install of a CPAN mod as the author had some sort of non-functional test in '\t' that would not pass on my perl.
Dist::Zilla this concept a little further and splits it into four types;
Rakudo.js managed to parse (including running BEGIN blocks) all of the setting with an exception of one line that requires figuring out/measuring how to support uncached methods efficiently. (uncached methods are ones where we let the HOW handle the method call by running arbitrary code rather then installing a bunch of methods at once).
Generating the js code for the setting uncovered some performance issues like overflowing the stack by recursing too much (fixed) and running out of memory (not yet fixed).
I'm now focusing on getting a small prefix of the setting to fully compile and load so that I can use it measure and optimize the memory usage.
As Perl 5 module authors, we were able to allow selective exporting easily by use of the @EXPORT_OK array where we listed all the objects that the user of our module could import by name, thereby giving the user full control over possible namespace clashes. However, in spite of all the new goodies provided by Perl 6, that feature is not yet available to us Perl 6 module authors. (For more information see issue #127305 on https://rt.perl.org.)
But the good news is there is a way to get the same effect, albeit with a bit more effort. The trick is in using the full power of tags with the export trait available with every object in a module.
One might get a little glassy-eyed when reading the Perl 6 docs concerning module import and export, of which a portion of code is shown here:
Well in the Dist-Pen today I am going to start to play with linking my Distro back into GitHub.
There are a good number of Dist::Zilla plug-ins to be found in CPAN that work with Git and GitHub in one way or an other. Unfortunately source management and system admiration are skills that I have always lacked, so I am hoping that a few of these plug-ins added to my '.ini' will help me keep my GitHub source both up to date and stop me from making any of the VCS Opps! that I have done in the past.
So to start I installed GitHub on the box where I do my building and replicated my database-accessor GitHub repository, not going to go into that you can find a very good tutorial on that here and most likely in many other that I have not seen.
I've been working on some slightly complicated code with a myriad of
bad design decisions over the course of a decade, and a total absence
of test suite. I knew I needed some code reusability in my tests but
I had no idea of exactly how much without making a quick start.
Meanwhile my brain was filled with ancient code from which I was
expurgating zombies, and had issues understanding multi-vendor
interactions, so I wanted some bare minimum reusability to make
engineering failure conditions easier.
Even though I am in the thralls of Perl 6, I still do all my web development in Perl 5 because the ecology of modules is so mature. Here I will describe how I typically go about creating a website. For example, I will reference a small project I built for an affordable housing non-profit in Tucson (https://github.com/kyclark/metagenomics-book/tree/master/web).
Data Model
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious. — Fred Brooks
Nothing captures my philosophy better than the above quote. Everything in my method starts from the database design and is propagated by code outward. I tend to use MySQL with InnoDB tables so that my database has foreign key constraints. (The only time I don’t use InnoDB is when I need a feature like FULLTEXT indexes.)
YAP, Yet another Post-ette here at the Dist-Pen today.
There seem to be a never ending list of the chores that are involved with creating a distribution for CPAN. This is my eight post dealing with these little chores and hopefully the last in this vain. So today I am going to see if Dist::Zilla can help me with the README file.
This file normally contains detailed instructions on on how to install the module, not really requirement for a simple Moose module like mine, but something like DBD::Oracle, it uses XS and an external data driver, the README is essential. Anyway I always think it is a good Idea to have one.
Dist::Zill comes with a '
Readme
' plug-in so lets give that a try first, by adding it into my '.ini' file;
This week marks 2 years since TOBYINK seemingly dropped off the perl map, in terms of viewable open source contributions that is. Since then the author's modules have gone unmaintained, consequently they are no longer compatible with recent versions of perl. This is going to cause problems eventually.
I, and several others, have sent e-mails to TONYINK but have not received any response. So TOBYINK, where are you? Are you OK? You seem to be active in at least one place? Can you give co-maint on some of your modules that are used or recommended in more widely deployed distributions? Some of your modules are too important to leave to abandonware, and forking them is a path i (and almost certainly others) don't want to take.
Edit: Some non-essential information removed as i don't want to give people bad ideas about compatibility between Moo/Mouse/Moose due to the use in our stack.
I haven't blogged lately because of ridiculous amounts of work on the Tau Station MMORPG (the game formerly known as Veure and written almost entirely in Perl). I had reluctantly stopped my last contract with ZipRecruiter because of surgery (long story, but not life-threatening) and then experiencing the joy of physiotherapy. Near the end of physio, we decided as a company to make a serious push on Tau Station and bring it to alpha. Here's an update.
Well another post-ette day again here in the Dist-Pen getting rid of one more chore.
Yep getting rid of one more chore the programmers least favorite thing next to code-reviews documenting your code. As good Perl programer we like to use POD as our format of choice and there are quite a few Modules out there that will help you a bit and some will get you started but alas the days of self documenting code are still not here.
Dist::Zilla does have a few plug-ins to help with documenting your code and as I really just want to get rid of some of the more boring chore work of documenting I decided on using 'Dist::Zilla::Plugin::PodWeaver'
Like all plugin I just add it to the '.ini', after I installed it,
If you've never given a talk at a Perl event before,
and perhaps never given a talk at any tech event,
I'd like to encourage you to give your first talk
at the London Perl Workshop.
I'm happy to be your LPW talk buddy, and help you
prepare for it, and am confident that other people
would be happy to help too.
Today I tried to set up the
Perl Maven
site on a fresh Ubuntu/xenial 16.04 using the system-perl.
Most of the CPAN modules the site needs could be installed using apt-get, but there were a few that I could not find or that were outdated.
Acme::MetaSyntactic 1.012 not found.
Business::PayPal 0.13 not found.
DBIx::RunSQL 0.12 not found.
Dancer2::Plugin::Passphrase 2.0.5 not found.
Dancer2::Session::Cookie 0 not found.
EBook::MOBI 0 not found.
MetaCPAN::Client 0 not found.
Module::Version 0 not found.
Template 2.25 not found. We have 2.24.
Test::WWW::Mechanize 1.44 not found. We have 1.42.
URL::Encode::XS 0 not found.
YAML::XS 0.59 not found. We have 0.41.
As we have seen in my last
post
Dist::Zilla is really good at doing all those boring yet important chores for you distribution, today I am going to look at another the Changes file. All distributions should have a changes file though I would guess there are quite a few without. I do not think there is any standard format out there but usually it is just something akin to
Eugene van der Pijll is the author of DateTime::Calendar::Christian, which manipulates dates in either Julian or Gregorian calendars, depending on what the date actually is. This module has not been updated since 2003, and uses the DateTimelanguage interface, that has since been deprecated in favor of locale and retracted..
I am trying to get it fixed, and am willing to adopt the module myself if that is what is necessary. I am working my way through Neil Bowers' Adopt a CPAN module. The forked and patched module can be found at GitHub. My desire is at least to get the stuff currently in GitHub into the module; that is, use the locale interface, add method today(), and document the valid values for reform_date. If I actually end up co-maintainer, I plan to fix what I see as a bug in DefaultReformDate() when the reform date is invalid, and try to flesh out missing methods in the DateTime interface.
Dancer2 0.204001 is on its way to a CPAN mirror near you. There are several important updates in this release that are worth noting:
Support for Perl 5.8 support has been restored. We used a named capture in a regex in resolving an issue in Dancer2 0.204000 and in the process, made Dancer2 unusable on Perl 5.8. This has been fixed. Thanks veryrusty!
Dancer2 0.204000 unintentionally required that Test::Perl::Critic be installed, and that we pass Perl::Critic tests to install properly. This has been reverted. We apologize for the inconvenience.
