Sam's Blog > Perl

Setting your repository in META.yml with Module::Build

Sam Graham — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:49:00 GMT

I've apparently had this blog sat in my out-bound queue since September 2010 and completely forgot to publish it. Meanwhile over on Perl 5 Maven, Gabor Szabo has raised the subject with his "How to convince Meta CPAN to show a link to the version control system of a distribution?" article.

Edit: turns out I'd left it unpublished for a reason, the sample code was actually broken. Just go and read Gabor's article instead - and thank him for testing my broken code! I've removed the broken code from the article below.

Whilst I was making some changes to Template::Sandbox and Template::Benchmark as part of my move to using git and GitHub, I noticed that there wasn't any documentation on how to set your source code respository for the META.yml when using Module::Build.

I thought a quick how-to would be handy.

Perlbrew support in Emacs Flymake

Sam Graham — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Good news for fans of App::perlbrew and Emacs Flymake: I've updated my fork of Flymake to include automatic support for perlbrew.

If you do a perlbrew switch in one window, the next run of Flymake in a Perl buffer will automatically update your $PATH in Emacs with the changes Perlbrew made.

Emacs-flymake-perlcritic overrides the code that was changed, but has also been updated to take advantage of the Perlbrew $PATH sync if it's available. This means that if you're using both you'll need to update both to see the changes.

If you're wondering what either of these are, the article "Perl and PHP continuous static analysis with Emacs Flymake" may help explain.

App::podweaver 1.00 (belatedly) released

Sam Graham — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:59:00 GMT

Yanick Champoux has posted the first of what promises to be an interesting series of blogs: Taming Pod::Weaver.

In it he mentions App::podweaver, which reminded me - a year after the fact - that I hadn't released a stable release yet.

So I have. Should be hitting a CPAN mirror near you soon.

Biggest change is that it should now respect perlbrew installs.

Perl and PHP continuous static analysis with Emacs Flymake

Sam Graham — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:54:00 GMT

I followed with interest the discussion and excitement last month in a few Perl blogs about people discovering Emacs Flymake.

Being a long-time Emacs user this seemed really interesting to me, but I don't tend to waste a huge amount of time making outright syntax errors.

What I really wanted was something like the static analysis that a modern IDE does for you while you type.

So I hooked up Perl::Critic and PHP_CodeSniffer to Flymake, and here's how you can too.

October 2010 Perl Template Roundup Released

Sam Graham — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:10:00 GMT

Having been a little busy for the past month and a half, my attempts to do the next Perl Template Roundup got delayed from September into October, partly by adding a number of new engine plugins to Template::Benchmark:

Support for pure-perl mode Text::Xslate was also added and two new cache-types for Template::Sandbox (Cache::FastMemoryCache and Cache::Ref::FIFO).

Then I had to sit around and wait for spare CPU time to actually run the multiple-days of benchmarks, unfortunately this clashed with me using that computer as I rushed to release stable versions of my other projects in anticipation of being too busy starting my new job.

Once the projects were out the door I could run the benchmarks, which completed mid-October, just in time for that whole "too busy" thing to kick in as I tied up loose ends before my start date.

Anyway, it's now November, and I figured I ought to do something about these reports... so here you go: the October 2010 Perl Template Roundup (belatedly).

Template Roundup September 2010: last chance for requests

Sam Graham — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:42:00 GMT

In the next few weeks I'll be starting to gather data for the September 2010 edition of Template Roundup, and so now is your last chance for any requests or suggestions to make it into the report.

Take a look at the previous reports or the list of template engines supported by Template::Benchmark and let me know if there's a template engine you'd particularly want to see benchmarked, or some feature that isn't covered.

You can either make your suggestion in the comments thread below or contact me via the contact page.

I'm quite looking forwards to seeing how well Text::Xslate does this time around, it was far and away the fastest fully-featured template engine in a persistent environment last time, but the recent changelogs suggest some great strides have been made to make it even faster in the past month.

All my published projects are now on GitHub

Sam Graham — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:32:00 GMT

Been a busy couple of weeks, but just thought I'd mention in case any of my previous contributors are interested: all my published projects are now available on GitHub.

Converting from CVS to git was surprisingly painless, although complicated by the fact that each project repository had a public and private part, since I manage each project's section of my website as part of the project, and I doubt anyone else has much use for the mishmash of templates and config files I use for that.

It was pretty easy add a regexp to prune out the bits I didn't want, convert my unix login to my git user details, and shift everything up a directory with the following commands:

git cvsimport -v -d /opt/cvs -S '(bin/|site/)' \
  -C git-Text-Matrix Text-Matrix \
  -A ~/git-cvsimport-authorconv.txt
cd git-Text-Matrix
git mv src/* .
rmdir src
git commit -m 'Shifted everything up a directory so repository root matches public section of old CVS project.'

I then did the same for the private directories and then placed the newly created directories back under my old project dir as separate git repositories.

Things seem to test OK, although looks like I've been a bit inconsistent with whether I've included generated files like MANIFEST and META.yml from project to project. I expect that'll sort itself out next time I work on any given project.

I really am kicking myself for sticking to CVS so long rather than giving git a try, if anyone else is lingering: make the effort, it'll repay itself within days.

Git honestly makes it effortless to do all those "Best Practice" things you never quite do with CVS because it's too much hassle.

GitHub is just icing on the cake.

Custom minting with Module::Starter and Test::XT

Sam Graham — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:49:00 GMT

In the comments to a previous article, I mentioned that I use Module::Starter when starting a new distribution.

I actually use a custom profile along with the very handy Test::XT to produce robust release tests that won't break when people are just trying to install with the minimum fuss.

I thought it might be useful for other people if I wrote a quick tutorial on how to achieve the same results themselves.

App::podweaver and Pod::Weaver::PluginBundle::ReplaceBoilerplate

Sam Graham — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:16:00 GMT

As mentioned in my previous article, "Still Alive and What I've Been Up To", I've been working on a way to let me use Pod::Weaver without being forced down the route of using Dist::Zilla.

(The reason for not using Dist::Zilla is that its work-flow doesn't fit mine.)

To that end I've developed App::podweaver, Pod::Weaver::Role::SectionReplacer, and Pod::Weaver::PluginBundle::ReplaceBoilerplate.

All the above are GitHub because they're not yet ready for CPAN release, since they lack important things like, oh, tests that they don't go nuts and delete all your code.

That said they're at a stable enough stage that I've used them to weave their own documentation without trouble, and are potentially of enough use and interest for me to put them up for early adopters to take a look at, or for people to copy the guts to do their own thing with.

For more details on what does what, carry on reading below the cut.

Still Alive and What I've Been Up To

Sam Graham — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:03:00 GMT

I've failed the Perl Iron Man Challenge again, but I'm still alive, just busy.

I've had a couple of articles semi-written for the past two weeks, but they still very much works-in-progress, because they're about projects that are still... very much in-progress.

So I thought I'd post an interim report in the style of the "What I'm Working On" posts that crop up every so often.

One project is getting Pod::Weaver to do what I want, as mentioned in my previous article, "To Dist::Zilla, or not to Dist::Zilla?", this has involved using Moose for the first time, Pod::Weaver for the first time, Pod::Elemental for the first time, Config::MVP for the first time, and Git for the first time.