blogs.perl.org

Currently I'm trying to convert our work test suite over to Test::Aggregate::Nested. This is an alternative to Test::Aggregate which is much cleaner internally and relies on nested TAP, available in the latest versions of the Test::Simple distribution. Using it is pretty simple:

use Test::Aggregate::Nested;

my $tests = Test::Aggregate::Nested->new( {
    dirs => $aggregate_test_dir,
} );
$tests->run;

There are a few more features I need to hack in, but two nice advantages this provides are:

1. The restriction on __END__ and __DATA__ tokens goes away.
2. "Variable will not stay shared" warnings go away.

Regrettably, it turns out that I've introduced a regression in Test::Aggregate itself. Apparently, "no_plan" tests don't work correctly, but this may be the nasty hacks to the Perl internals which Test::Aggregate relies upon. Fortunately, the nested version minimizes those hacks quite a bit.

The 2009 conference season hasn't ended yet and already I am booking flights for next year's conferences. It looks like I will be attending both Perl Oasis and Frozen Perl at the start of next year. I won't be travelling back to Japan between the conferences so I should also get some time to meet up with the Perl Mongers in Pittsburgh and New York.

There is so much happening in the world of Perl at the moment...

• New blogs (this was posted to https://blogs.perl.org/!)
• New web designs (more on this another time)
• New approaches (Moose, Catalyst, DBIx::Class etc etc etc)
• New initiatives (Iron Man, TPF marketing etc etc)

I haven't historically been a blogger, but I think some of the projects I do at work (http://www.foxtons.co.uk/) as well as home might be of interest, so I'll try and do the occasional wright up here.

Try::Tiny is one of those tools that feels like it should always be in your toolbox. Handling exceptions in Perl is awkward; Java, JavaScript, Python, and Objective-C all provide native try syntax. Perl does, mostly, via eval {} blocks, but it's hinky. Errors coming out of the block aren't local by default, and it's almost a dozen lines of boilerplate to add it properly.

Enter Try::Tiny:

It appears that, at long last, we'll get a proper blogging platform! With syntax highlighting:

    sub add_to_list {
        my ( $self, $text ) = @_;
        return unless defined $text;
        $text = $self->interpolate($text);

        # This horror of horrors is because we want simple lists to be single
        # spaced, unless there are further details after the =item line, in which
        # case an extra newline is needed for pleasant formatting.
        my $break = '';
        if ( $self->list_data =~ /\n.ITEM\n.*\n$/ && $text !~ /^.ITEM/ ) {
            $break = "\n";
        }
        $self->list_data( $self->list_data . "$break$text" );
    }

And we even have images! (Not that they're helping this post look any better.

And if you look down below, you even see tags :)