New features on rt.cpan.org

We implemented and deployed two new features on rt.cpan.org.

Subject Tags

People with many distributionss will love it, as it allows youto add a custom string into subject of emails per distribution. Subject of emails will be something like [rt.cpan.org YourTokenHere #123].

We decided to leave rt.cpan.org there, but I'm pretty sure therewill be people who will try to abuse the feature. Be smart, don'tuse two short and too long tags, remember that reporters also recieveemails.

Maintainers list with links

It's just UI sugar, each maintainer in the list is now wrapped intoa link that lead to all modules this author maintains.

Trying Padre on MacOS

For a while wanted to play with Padre. It's IDE writen in perl programming language and at this point its main target is perl developers. I tried it once on windows, but I don't develop on windows. For development I use perl5.8 from MacPorts on MacOS X.

First of all you find that Padre requires threaded perl and it's reasonable requirement. So I had to switch perl. I've deactivated perl5.8 and installed new one with threads using the following commands:

    port deactivate perl5.8
    port install perl5.8 +threads

Sure such things don't work well: binary incompatibility and path changes. CPAN shell died complaining about missing dzopen in Compress::Zlib. Installed manually from the CPAN. Didn't help. So I deleted all directories that may affect things:

    # get rid of old perl files, the current version is 5.8.9
    find /opt/local/lib/perl5 -name '5.8.8' | xargs sudo rm -fr
    # get rid of everything related to compression
    find /opt/local/lib/perl5 | grep 'Compress' | xargs sudo rm -fr
    # get rid of everything related to old architecture, new one is darwin-threaded-multi-2level
    find /opt/local/lib/perl5 -type d -name darwin-2level | xargs sudo rm -fr

Ok. CPAN started to work as it can use gzip and gunzip commands. Re-installed Compress::Zlib. Then I usually install CPAN::Reporter module. It slows down installation a little bit, but it helps perl community provide you better solutions. Installation is simple:

    sh> cpan
    cpan> install CPAN::Reporter
    cpan> o conf init test_report
    cpan> o conf commit

Then I started installing Padre :)

    cpan> install Padre

It takes some time, so in another console I was looking at breaks in my perl. First of all subversion-perlbings was broken and svk didn't work. So it was easy to fix by reinstalling it using "port -f upgrade subversion-perlbindings" command. Upgraded in the same way all packages matching p5-*.

Installation of Padre failed, but it doesn't mean anything. I deleted lots of files. For example Algorithm::C3 was deleted when Class::MOP is not. It's all easy to fix. Just install modules when some tests die with "module is missing" error.

At the end I had problems with File::HomeDir. It's something that affects loading Padre. Reported a bug report and decided to stop at this point.

Some conclusions. Macports are good, but not that good. For example gentoo has perl-cleaner utility that helps fix things. revdep-rebuild is another gentoo's tool that help a lot during upgrades. At the end switching from perl without threads to version with threads support is a lot of reinstallations. I'm fine with that, but don't think a lot of people are too. I don't think that building everything from scratch for Padre is going to help its acceptance. I see more benefit from helping MacPorts and other distributions solve problems switching from not-threaded perl to threaded and back. File::HomeDir needs more love. Otherwise I had no problems, but the app is not functioning at this moment. Going to try a little some day later.

Perl resource you may didn't know about

Do you know which country dominates on the CPAN? Guys in RostovOnDon.pm know that. They wrote a simple service for that. It looks nice and simple. It has one feature that may be useful - RSS feed of releases per author.

Where can you find code behind rt.cpan.org

Hi, continuing with blogging around http://rt.cpan.org.

Some people still think that rt.cpan.org is something hidden in Best Practical's cages where we hold it like a prisoner. It's not true for a long time.

Started simple about rt.cpan.org document. I hope peopl will find link to this document on the main page.

Report spam button on rt.cpan.org

May be you don't know, but when people complain about http://rt.cpan.org service.I'm one of responsible for some stupidities. Heh. I'm not going to protect myself.

Fruck. All the cpan authors are responsible. The code behind the service is freeand you can send patches and extensions. Do you know number of those we recieved?ZERO.

That was a headup. Now, about reporting spam, I've writen a simple RT extension soregular users can help report messages as spam. It's in best practical's repository:

   http://svn.bestpractical.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi/bps/browse/RT-Extension-ReportSpam

I've installed it already, but it has several problems:

1. no icons for the button.

2. when you click on link, browser jumps to a page when it should be AJAX style.it works locally, but doesn't on the service. It needs debugging.

Help is welcome. You can write to ruz@bestpractical.com or find ruz/ruz_macon IRC channels.

The way to search those spam tickets is described in the README.