Video: autodie - a lexical Fatal for Perl 5.10

pjf on 2008-06-01T10:49:11

Video: autodie - a lexical Fatal for Perl 5.10
Today's blog post is an adaption of a mail I just sent to perl5-porters. If you're curious about what this autodie business is that I've been talking about, here's your chance to find out. If you're reading this on my main blog you can just hit play on the widget below.

Some time ago, I started discussing the idea of autodie (previously codenamed 'lethal'), a lexical version of Fatal that could be implemented now that Perl 5.10's %^H hash does wonderful things.

Despite a small period where I was distracted by other things, I'm back to working on autodie, as I'm quite eager to get it released. To help facilitate that, I've done a couple of things:

  • I've put my working repository on-line at:

    http://github.com/pfenwick/autodie/tree/master

    Feel free to clone it, play with it, and especially ask questions or make patches. If you have a github account, and want commit access, ask.

  • I've put my 5 minute talk about autodie on my blog at:

    http://pjf.id.au/blog/?position=540

    It's just like watching me talk at a Perl Mongers meeting, but the guy in the second row can't heckle all the way through.

The code at the moment should be considered a "work in progress", meaning it's ugly, filled with XXX and TODO's, is missing documentation, and contains undead horrors from Fatal's code generation routines. Patches, questions, or just general encouragement welcome. ;)

The on-line video contains a few things which aren't there quite yet, most notably:

  • We don't have 5.10.1, nor has autodie been released with it, but I hope you'll all think it's a good enough idea that it will be. (It will also upgrade Fatal to have better error messages and a proper exception hierarchy).
  • It's not yet on CPAN. Since the autodie repository includes (a very modified) Fatal.pm, I don't want to upload non-production ready code that someone may install by accident.

Feedback, questions, and patches of any sort is most welcome. If you're not sure of my e-mail, I'm PJF on CPAN.