transfixed but not dead! » github

First reported bug for one of my CPAN modules

draegtun — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:41:38 +0000

It should invoke some trepidation when seeing the first ever reported bug hitting your inbox. However it was the complete opposite because I got a nice warm feeling about the fact that something I’ve written is being used in the wild.

Still the bug(s) needs fixing and its understandable that prolific CPAN / opensource authors may get bogged down having to find time to fix bugs in heavily used projects.

Fortunate for me I only have a few CPAN modules at this time and I doubt they’re heavily used! Even more lucky that in this case the bug was only related to testing on Windows.

So if you’ve written software then you have bugs! Thus you need a good issue tracking system to keep a handle on things. Luckily CPAN comes with its own Request Tracker (RT) from Best Practical. My first reported bug came via this last week.

You can change your CPAN module page to point to any other issue tracker should you wish this (see part about amending your meta tag and also my old post on repo link). But I’m more than happy to go with RT and there maybe good reasons for doing this because it maybe better integrated into the CPAN toolchain (my PAUSE login worked with RT).

BTW, my testing with Windows issue is the usual pathname and EOL delimiter differences. Just because it leaves your box with 100% passes it would be silly to expect it arrives at someone else’s box the same

/I3az/

PS. Related references:

CPAN Smoke Testing: An unsung hero

Nearly famous on Github!

draegtun — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:39:26 +0000

After reading about Tatsuhiko Miyagawa well deserved accolade for being famous on github, I thought I better check my own vanity score

I was a little shocked to see i am listed in San Francisco list? Though no surprises to see I’m in the bottom bunch with score of 0.0 on that list!

But i am relieved to see i do appear in the London list and indeed pretty chuffed to see i reached a respectable position of 155 with a github “social score” of 688.949686387002

Well done to Miyagawa and all those other Perl mongers who continue keep the Perl flag flying high on Github.

/I3az/

refs:

Receiving contributions to your Github project

draegtun — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:52:16 +0000

Received my first ever contribution to one of my Github projects today. A pull request from a cpanservice? And I wasn’t the only one or was wondering who this cpanservice is or was?

I suspect that this as something to do with the recent gitPAN upload to Github and therefore is probably some automated service that is going through related projects making sure that Github CPAN projects do have the meta repository tag populated in the build process.

NB. I blogged about this repository link back in May but forgot to put my changes live. *blush*

This contribution was the necessary nudge I needed to find out how to use git to merge in external changes. Github itself did seem to provide a web option to apply this change directly under “Fork Queue”. However I wanted to do it all via git so first place I looked is the Github documention on pull requests.

My local directory was up-to-date so I just needed to do the following to pull & merge into my code:

git pull git://github.com/cpanservice/builder.git master

All merged and committed (see PS). Quick check of diffs & logs and then just needed to populate it back to Github:

git push origin master

You will see cpanservice changes immediately in the commits. However the Github graphs and fork queue take a little while to be updated to show the merge.

/I3az/

PS. The merged cpanservice changes showed up under me in the network graph (see red line below) despite showing up correctly under commits.

I think this is because I merge changes locally and then pushed back to Github? Its not an issue for these cpanservice changes but I would like to get it right for “proper” contributors.

So I think the alternate merge example documented by Github might be the better approach?

git remote add defunkt git://github.com/defunkt/grit.git git fetch defunkt git merge defunkt/master

Contributing to a project on Github

draegtun — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:20:43 +0000

After getting my head into Devel::Declare::Context::Simple to create the bare URL for my last blog post
I realised that I’ve percolated enough knowledge about the module that it would be a good idea to redirect it back to the project by at least doing the POD.

This will be the first time I’ve “properly” contributed in some form to an opensource project (“properly” being via source control management & a patch).

Devel::Declare is hosted on Github here. And the process to contribute back changes to a Github project is “forking” simple!

With Git & Github its all about forking. Here is a concise Github howto (which I’ll regurgitate below with my own slant & spiel!).

I only use Git for my Github projects, so forking etc is all new to me. To break it down into a few simple steps the process to contribute would be:

Fork project
Clone your fork
Make your changes
Push changes back to you fork
Send pull request back to original project

Here are the minutiae steps I went through for Devel::Declare:

Went to Devel::Declare project on Github and forked it.
Forked project now appears in my project list.
Cloned my forked Devel::Declare (use “Your Clone URL” copy/paste)
git clone git@github.com:draegtun/devel-declare.git cd devel-declare/
Linked my forked project to original
git remote add upstream git://github.com/rafl/devel-declare.git git fetch upstream
Make my changes to project
Run tests (in case I did something stupid!)
perl Makefile.PL make make test
Clear down build once happy
make realclean
Push my changes back to my fork
git commit -a -m "Documentation added to D::D::Context::Simple + examples directory" git push origin master

Now on Github the changes can be seen in my fork

All I do now is click the “pull request” button and off went a request of my changes to rafl. Fingers cross my documentation changes were good enough to be accepted.

So I’m no longer a virgin to contributing to this opensource malarky

/I3az/

Github and POD

draegtun — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:57:22 +0000

If you look at the Github README formatting guide you will notice a feature request for POD that yours truly left there 10 months ago.

Recently I noticed that POD’s on Github were being rendered now (which may have been the case for quite a while and simply passed me by!). For eg. chromatic’s Modern Perl Book outline.pod.

So I added a README.pod to my Builder repo on Github and it works taking precedence over the plain README when rendering the repo landing page.

So no need to resort to using Markdown or Textile… its POD all the way! Hats off to Github for adding POD.

This is the README.pod I ended up with after a few trial attempts:

=head1 Builder

Build XML, HTML and (eventually!) other outputs in blocks
 

=head2 VERSION

version 0.04

This distribution includes the following modules:

    Builder             (0.04)
    Builder::Utils      (0.02)
    Builder::XML        (0.02)
    Builder::XML::Utils (0.02)
    

=head2 SYNOPSIS

Using building blocks to render XML, CSS, HTML and other outputs.

    use Builder;
    my $builder = Builder->new;
    my $xm      = $builder->block( 'Builder::XML' );
    
    
    # example 1
     
    $xm->parent( { isa => 'Mother' }, $xm->child( 'Hi Mum!' ) );
    say $builder->render;
    
    # Hi Mum!
    
    
    # example 2
     
    $xm->parent( sub {
        for my $say qw/Mum Dad/ {
            $xm->child( "Hi $say" );
        }
    });
    
    say $builder->render;
        
    # Hi MumHi Dad


=head2 INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

	perl Build.PL
	./Build
	./Build test
	./Build install


=head2 DEPENDENCIES

This module requires these other modules and libraries:

	Carp


=head2 SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the
perldoc command.

    perldoc Builder


=head2 COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2008,2009 Barry Walsh (Draegtun Systems Ltd)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.

/I3az/

Update 08-Dec-2009: I’ve now amended the GitHub README formatting guide wiki to show that POD is now a supported format

Something for the Bank Holiday weekend

draegtun — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:33:01 +0000

Well if you’ve got nothing to do this long bank holiday weekend (UK hols) then you could enter the GitHub Contest. You’ve got till noon Sunday PST to enter your solution

I’ve had this on my “interesting todo” list for a while now. Like a lot of things on that list which have deadlines they unfortunately tend get passed by

I’ve made a promise to stay away from computer this bank holiday weekend. Shame because data munging with Perl is something I do enjoy doing.

There have been a few Perl solutions entered:

John Resig with 266 score (5.555%) (Yes John Resig of jQuery fame and the occasional CPAN module
Ultraist with 2408 score (50.29%)

John Resig is a cheeky top score ditty

Ultraist is currently 8th on the leaderboard with a much more complex solution.

I think this is currently the highest Perl entry…. so good luck Ultraist and all other Perl entries.

/I3az/

Repository link now appearing on CPAN

draegtun — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:45:16 +0000

Had me looking twice because seeing repository link on module pages on CPAN was new to me…..

Yes it is new and I wasn’t the first to spot it: hanekomu’s Perl blog: Metadata on search.cpan.org

Hanekomu shows how to implement it in Module::Install. And Alexandr Ciornii comment points to how it can be done in Module::Build.

This is what you need to do in Module::Build (see meta_merge part):

use strict;
use warnings;
use Module::Build;

my $builder = Module::Build->new(
    module_name         => 'Builder',
    license             => 'perl',
    dist_author         => 'Barry Walsh ',
    dist_version_from   => 'lib/Builder.pm',
    build_requires => {
        'Test::More' => 0,
        'Carp'       => 0,
    },
    add_to_cleanup      => [ 'Builder-*' ],
    create_makefile_pl  => 'traditional',

    meta_merge => {
      resources => {
          bugtracker => 'http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Builder',
          repository  => 'http://github.com/draegtun/builder/tree/master'
      }
    },
);

$builder->create_build_script();

Running “./Build distmeta” produces the correct META.yml

/I3az/

GitHub went down

draegtun — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:23:52 +0000

Typical hey… within a few hours of me pushing my first piece of code to GitHub it goes and dies! Reminds me of when I first tried Twitter (though I suspect everyone got that problem!).

Anyway good news… nothing was lost (phew!) and GitHub is now available again (yippee!).

/I3az/