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The future of Test::Distribution

brian_d_foy on 2007-10-25T18:00:00

Test::Distribution is probably the most widely used of all the Perl modules that I've developed. It's certainly the only one that I know of that has been mentioned in an O'Reilly book.

Over the last couple of years (mainly ever since my wife and I moved out of the parents and gained the responsibility of maintaining our own household) I haven't been able to give it the attention it needed. I'm hoping that will change over the next few years, but I've hoped that several times in the past too...

I'm interested in people's views on what I should do with T::D. Some ideas:

  • Just pick off where I left off. Start going through the rt bugs and look to adding support for Module::Build in particular
  • Deprecate the module in favour of _____
  • Try and merge with the Kwailitie/CPANTS etc. tools out there which attack a similar domain but from a different angle
  • Spend my time on a different project

    It'd be really good to hear from people that still use Test::Distribution and would appreciate me coming out from hibernation.

More features

srezic on 2007-10-25T20:30:05

More checks I can think of, especially when preparing a distribution for CPAN upload:
  • check if the author has the namespace permissions on all modules
  • check if all module versions are properly incremented, if necessary

Re:More features

Sags on 2007-10-28T14:01:00

Some good ideas there. Thanks.

Do you actually use T::D atm?

That's the first thing I want to establish - if I make the effort of picking it up again will people use the changes!

Open up the development

Alias on 2007-10-25T23:14:31

Let go of the baby...

Get it into a publically-facing repository, give commit rights to anyone that wants it.

I notice Test::Distribution is not reliable dependency, it has a ton of CPAN Testers failures. The first step is probably to make it safe to depend on.

Re:Open up the development

AndyArmstrong on 2007-10-26T09:04:53

Seconded.

Re:Open up the development

Sags on 2007-10-28T13:59:33

Yes, that is the first thing I'm planning on doing - moving the source to my sagar-r-shah sourceforge project [I'm sure you can guess who I nicked the idea from ;-)]

I disagree with your comments about T::D being a reliable dependency, but I'm not going to get into a debate about that at this stage.

Re:Open up the development

Sags on 2007-10-28T18:24:50

Now on sf.net:

http://sagar-r-shah.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/sagar-r-shah/trunk/perl/Test-Dist ribution/

Re:Open up the development

Sags on 2007-10-28T19:58:53

Test::Distribution 1.26 had 14 failures out of 161 test reports. That's less than 9%. I'm willing to bet that a few of those failures will be duds rather than than actual issues with Test::Distribution.

I certainly wouldn't describe that as a "ton".

Test::Distribution only has 4 rt tickets and none of those are major issues, so I would hope that on reflection you will reconsider your aspersion of it not being a reliable dependency.

You developed Test::Distribution?

hanekomu on 2007-10-26T10:42:09

Sorry, I'm confused. Test::Distribution was originally created by me and is now maintained by Sagar R. Shah, see its page on search.cpan.org. Its "Changes" file also mentions you only because I got the idea for the module from one of your posts on use.perl.org in 2002.

Am I missing something?

Re:You developed Test::Distribution?

hanekomu on 2007-10-26T11:09:13

Oh, brian d foy didn't write that piece, he just posted it.

My bad. Nothing to see here, move on.

The future of Test::Distribution

kid51 on 2007-10-26T16:08:58

If you want to put it up for adoption, post on perl.module-authors. I've adopted a couple of other people's modules. I also spoke on the topic of adoption of CPAN modules at YAPC::NA::2006 in Chicago, so I can offer tips to potential adoptive parent(s).

Re: The future of Test::Distribution

Sags on 2007-10-28T14:06:19

I'm still interested in T::D if others are. The first thing I plan to do is to move it to a public repository.

I've just been having problems getting sourceforge svn to pick up all the history because I don't want to import my entire svn repository just some parts and the filtering doesn't seem to help.

I think there are some other modules I own which I'm less likely to do anything with (Business::Billing::TMobile::UK as I'm against the company's support of terrorism - long story) so maybe those I will put up for adoption!