Request co-maintainer for Alien
Per my previous discussion on this list, I would like to update the Alien module (manifesto) with current best practices and adding the capability of detecting an existing installation as a common-sense default that would lead to Alien::XXX modules that are much more likely to support difficult platforms than the current install-only practice. I've made two email attempts to the module author and tried to reach him by phone without luck. If this is not possible, I could always release an updated manifesto in a different namespace---but that seems ugly. Thoughts? Chris
What to call a module that rewrites Perl code
At $work, I've been writing scripts that use PPI to munge massive amounts of legacy code. So far simple things like changing die/warn to croak/carp, ensuring all modules specify a minimum version number, or changing print foo\n so say foo, etc. It seems worthy enough to turn this code into a CPAN module. My thoughts are that it would use a plugin system for specific tasks, and a command-line script that takes plugin names as arguments, so basically you'd run the script to apply various tasks to a set of modules or scripts in a directory, perhaps using a configuration file for each of the plugins. The early version would have simple plugins, but there's no reason why more complex plugins couldn't be written (e.g. to translate a non-Moose class into something Moose-like), or other things like optimize certain kinds of expressions. I'm well aware of the limitations of doing this automatically. But the idea is to get a script that can do the bulk of the tedious rewriting, so that a human can clean up the mistakes. It's meant to be run by intelligent people who use things like version control and tests. So what should it be called? I'm thinking Perl::Rewrite is the best name. Alternatives are: - Perl::Refactor - except refactoring has a technical meaning that I don't think applies - Perl::Modernize - except that one might want a plugin that translates newer-style code into older code - Perl::Munge - except that it connotes sloppiness - Perl::Snorft - no, just kidding I have no idea what that means. - ? Thanks, Rob
Re: What to call a module that rewrites Perl code
On Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:11:03 +0100 Robert Rothenberg r...@cpan.org wrote: At $work, I've been writing scripts that use PPI to munge massive amounts of legacy code. So far simple things like changing die/warn to croak/carp, ensuring all modules specify a minimum version number, or changing print foo\n so say foo, etc. It seems worthy enough to turn this code into a CPAN module. My thoughts are that it would use a plugin system for specific tasks, and a command-line script that takes plugin names as arguments, so basically you'd run the script to apply various tasks to a set of modules or scripts in a directory, perhaps using a configuration file for each of the plugins. The early version would have simple plugins, but there's no reason why more complex plugins couldn't be written (e.g. to translate a non-Moose class into something Moose-like), or other things like optimize certain kinds of expressions. I'm well aware of the limitations of doing this automatically. But the idea is to get a script that can do the bulk of the tedious rewriting, so that a human can clean up the mistakes. It's meant to be run by intelligent people who use things like version control and tests. So what should it be called? I'm thinking Perl::Rewrite is the best name. Alternatives are: - Perl::Refactor - except refactoring has a technical meaning that I don't think applies - Perl::Modernize - except that one might want a plugin that translates newer-style code into older code - Perl::Munge - except that it connotes sloppiness - Perl::Snorft - no, just kidding I have no idea what that means. - ? Perl::Modify? Perl::Transform? Perl::Revise? I don't like Perl::Rewrite too much because it may (but not necessarily) imply rewriting from scratch. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/ “My only boss is God. And Chuck Norris who is his boss.” — http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Chuck-Norris/ Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
