If anyone here is using the Bryar blogging tool, originally written by Simon Cozens and now maintained by me, and has any objection to me deleting the following components, please yell now!
I have decided to clear out a load of dead code. mod_perl support isn't maintained anyway. I have decided that DBI and Flatfile::Dated are dead because:
This is as part of a big clean-up which will also include making sure that there is adequate test coverage.
First off, I have to say that I don't use Bryar, if only because I don't use blogging software. (And maybe hardly anybody uses it at all...)
But I must say that I am stunned that you are going to remove support for DBI... Especially, as reading the module's docs, it describes itself as "a modular, extensible weblog tool", probably with aspirations to be considered a versatile, professional kit. Now, a weblog tool that can only save data to text files, that does not have a professional ring to me...
And for what reason: "to improve test code coverage"...???? Madness. I looked at the source of Bryar::DataSource::DBI, and I must say, there is not much there. There is not much to test, except make sure that it basically works. (As an aside: I'm not convinced that it actually does work.
I think it would be a shame that the knowledge on how to use DBI as a storage back-end would disappear, simply because it doesn't have enough tests.
In fact, if I were shopping for blog software and I found no support for a database back-end, that might convince me to look somewhere else. For an item on a features list, this seems to me to be fairly essential.
What you could do, with my blessing, is rip it out of this distribution and make a separate module distribution out of it. Apart from just getting it out of your way, it apparently has extra dependencies that are not listed in Makefile.PL (or META.yml). So as is, it can't work just out of the box, not even after being properly installed, because of missing dependencies. From its docs:
That is just not right, and ought to change. If you make it a separate distro, you just have to list them in Makefile.PL.
Oh, I think I noticed a small technical problem with it: the module code doesn't end in a true value, but in a sub definition. Maybe that is why it's listed on search.cpan.org as documentation, instead of as a module.
That's just my 2 cents. Feel free to ignore me. I won't be cross about it. Promised.
Re:Remove support for DBI??
drhyde on 2008-09-12T11:35:38
There are currently no tests whatsoever for the DBI support. None. Therefore I have no idea whatsoever whether it works. Test coverage elsewhere in the application is rather scanty as well. I'd rather work on improving coverage elsewhere, in the bits of the application I actually use (so that I can then add features without breaking stuff) than spend my time on bits of the application that I don't use and am unlikely to ever use.
When *I* was looking for a blog system, I chose Bryar precisely because it didn't require a database. If you want a database, then you have lots of other choices.
And yes, I am *hoping* that someone will volunteer to take over the bits I'm removing. Even if no-one does, they'll still be on the backpan so could be resurrected fairly easily.
