On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:49 AM, yary <not....@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello all, > > I install Test::Reporter on any machine I administer, so that as I > install perl modules, their success or failure gets reported. Now I'm > getting emails asking me to use HTTP. I'm trying to follow them, but > am hitting roadblocks, and am wondering why I'm jumping through hoops > to fix what seemed to be working fine from my perspective.
Hi, yary. Thanks for writing with your questions. The switchover to HTTP based submission was prompted by the perl.org administrators, who were getting nearly half a million test reports by email -- accounting for about 99% of monthly email traffic to perl.org mailing lists. Since more and more people were having trouble with email submission due to restrictive firewalls and ISP's, the second generation transport is HTTP. Unfortunately, due to the haste of the switch and the limited volunteer time to write documentation and code to automate the conversion, there is still a good deal of manual work to do. > Here's some thoughts- > > I upgraded to the latest Test::Reporter, which I expected would use > HTTP by default. But that's not the case- I have to read the email to > see that I need to go to a web page that tells me I have to install > # Test::Reporter::Transport::Metabase 1.999004; > # Metabase::Client::Simple 0.006; > # Metabase::Fact 0.013; > > Seems that if HTTP/Metabase is required going forward, then those > should be dependencies of Test::Reporter's latest version There are reasons why they can't be dependencies of Test::Reporter, but I do think it makes sense for us to put out a "Task::CPAN::Testers" module to help make upgrading easier. > I now need to claim a profile. This step doesn't work for me. I go to > "http://metabase.cpantesters.org/claimid/";, put in my email address, > and get "No entry found" > > Is the "claim" step necessary for a casual tester, someone who isn't > regularly downloading & building large swaths of cpan? You don't need to claim a profile. You can create one from scratch and it will work. We need to update the documentation to make that clear. > Next, if I understand correctly, if claiming a profile works, I'll > receive an attachment via email, and have to save it on any server I > want to send smoke tests from. (And one of my servers has more than > one person installing from cpan, does it have to be saved in each of > our .cpan directories?) I have to wonder if that's truly necessary, > from a design perspective. My email address is a unique key, and if > you want to verify that it's a valid email, then send me a link to > click on or a code to enter into a form. A profile just provides a unique identifier that persists across changes in email address. Think of it like an "API key". It is unique to you and can't easily be forged. Clearly, we need to look into making it easier to auto-generate. If you have multiple users, either they should each have a profile, or you should have one master one and the configuration should point to it. > I can see how requiring submissions via http can make things simpler > at the central collection site, but can you also keep it simple for > the clients too? Used to be, installing Test::Reporter was all I had > to do. If it's much more than that I'm not sure I can keep sending > reports. The second generation servers are launched, but we're still using first-generation clients with some hacks to get it to work. We hope eventually to make it as nearly easy as installing Test::Reporter was for you. Out of curiosity, are you using CPAN or CPANPLUS? -- David
