All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Please release me

nkuitse on 2004-03-25T15:35:29

I have three Perl modules just begging to be released:

Plus a new version of FRELI, my English wordlist.

But somehow I just can't seem to let them go. I find myself racking my brains to think of every little detail:

  • Do I have everything in my MANIFEST?
  • Are my tests OK?
  • Did I remember to add a SEE ALSO section to that module's POD?
  • Don't forget to cvs tag!!

With tools like make distcheck, t/pod.t, and cpan-upload there's really no reason to worry. But for some reason I do anyhow.

It's like I'm a parent whose child is getting ready to leave home and go to college. All for a few little bits of code and data. Sheesh! So pathetic...

It's hard to let go.

Module::Release :)

jbisbee on 2004-03-25T15:57:15

Grab Module::Release

Module::Release

Once you install the package, read the docs, and get things setup, just cd into your distribution directory and 'release'.

It makes sure CVS is up to date, generates the MANIFEST, runs all the checks, then sends the tarball off to either or both CPAN and Source Forge. (I'm sure I'm missing other wonderful things it does so just read the docs) :)

It took a bit to get things setup and found a couple annoyances (that I didn't bother to note back then and can't remember), but once you get it setup, its a cake walk to release updates.

Heh

chaoticset on 2004-03-25T19:28:08

I read that wrong at first -- I thought your wordlist was called FRELL .

Just release them

jhi on 2004-03-25T21:12:08

People will find out the bugs that matter. Those they won't find, don't matter.

(No, I haven't drunk the Microsoft QA kool-aid. I'm just being pragmatic.)

Re:Just release them

htoug on 2004-03-26T10:34:10

Yes.

Release early, release often

Your users will find many more bugs than you ever could - if they don't then everything is fine.
You will even get to test things better yourself, because you will be installing the module from CPAN (you will be doing that won't you?) just as anybody else - so many bugs may show up at that point. I find that a release after a major overhaul resultat in a flurry of small bug-fix releases until everything stabilises.

If you are really uncertain, then tell you users that this is a pre-release for testing - many will help by testing it for you.

Re:Just release them

nkuitse on 2004-03-26T14:06:08

Release early, release often.

To these I hope to add: Release happily.

Rather than Release nerve-wrackingly, that is. :-)