Posted on

Pull Request for App::CLI::Extension submitted

Eight days ago I submitted the pull request https://github.com/holly/perl-App-CLI-Extension/pull/1

today I contacted the maintainer of the module, Akira, to see if they had any feedback. I’m hoping to get something constructive back which leads to a merge and ultimate release of these – admittedly tiny – changes.

This was quite possibly the least I could do, but I did find it challenging since I’ve never really used the module. I learned a lot about how this module was structured, how Module::Install works, and I learned about configuring things in Travis-CI.

I’m looking forward to responding to any feedback from the module maintainer, and I’m excited to see how next month goes, too.

Posted on

Pull Request Challenge Update

So, today I got a little more progress on my task. I found an xt/perlcritic.t test, and I updated it to use severity 3. I need to remove the no refs from the perlcriticrc because I worry that I think there are more places that use it than need to… but I need to check.

I’ve got most of the files passing now, and now my git status looks like this:

~/Documents/Devel/perl-App-CLI-Extension$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
        modified:   Changes
        modified:   Makefile.PL
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension.pm
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension/Component/Config.pm
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension/Component/ErrorHandler.pm
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension/Component/InstallCallback.pm
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension/Component/OriginalArgv.pm
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension/Component/RunCommand.pm
        modified:   lib/App/CLI/Extension/Component/Stash.pm
        modified:   xt/perlcritic.t

I’m excited about what I’m going to be able to commit here soon, but I’m going to do all of these perlcritic commits at once so as to make it easier for the maintainer to review.

Posted on

Tonight's progress on the Pull Request Challenge

I have updated App::CLI::Extension tonight to have another module within my assignment meeting perlcritic -2 with the exception of POD headings. I’m also throwing Readonly into the per more modern best practices. I’m going to include updating those constants to using Readonly as I move along.

Another day, another tiny improvement.

Posted on

2015 Pull Request Challenge: At First Glance

So, I have a couple of confessions to make:

  • I confess that sometimes I am a little judgemental of others code
  • I confess that I am defensive when other people judge my code
  • When I first looked at my assigned module, I confess that I started passing judgement on it.
  • When I first started really digging into my assigned module, I confess that I seriously considered recommending that it be deprecated.
  • I confess that I was absolutely wrong, and that in being a judgemental ass I almost missed the whole point of this exercise.

Neil did not ask me to be judgemental, or to critique other peoples’ contributions to the rich set of modules contributed freely to CPAN. Neil’s challenge wasn’t for us to help identify modules to remove from CPAN, I suspect that there are already parameters for doing that and that when it is appropriate to do so that this is done.

The challenge at hand was to take a module that has been abandoned and left lonely, not being updated or added to, and give it a little TLC. Even if it is just a spit-shine, these modules need something… anything.

I can’t help but feel like I walked into this challenge having completely missed the point of the whole thing.

It’s hard releasing stuff into open source. I’ve been doing so for more than 18 years now, and it’s not an easy thing to do, subjecting your work to criticism. We owe it to one another to at the very least not be judgemental and dismissive in this challenge.

So, what am I doing to improve App::CLI::Extension? I’ve got two things in store:

  1. First, this module doesn’t currently build. I think it’s a change in Module::Install that’s causing trouble, so I want to fix that.
  2. Second, I want to improve the module to meet more of the current best-practices. I’ll probably use a lot of perlcritic and PBP for this.

I don’t know what else to do just yet, but it seems like so far I’ve got a few hours of work. Let me know what you think, and if you use this module, definitely speak up and let me know if you have any specific requests.

Posted on

I got my first assignment from Neil for the Pull Release Challenge: App::CLI::Extension

Tonight is my usual coding night, so I’ll probably start tonight, but I also have some more work to do on Net::AMQP::RabbitMQ.