Tech Tip: Finding CPAN Distributions that only have a Build.PL

A few times in the past, I wanted to find perl 5 CPAN distributions that only had a Module-Build-based Build.PL file and not a fallback Makefile.PL file. Yesterday, after some trial and error, I was able to formulate Yahoo Search query, to do just that.

Here it is - the shortened URL with a hyperlink to the full one:

http://xrl.us/bezbkx - Yahoo Search to find Build.PL only distributions

It works by looking for specific phrases in the /dist pages, looking for "Build.PL" and specifically excluding "Makefile.PL". I hereby place this URL and whatever associated techniques under CC0 / Public Domain. Enjoy!

Syndicated 2009-07-01 15:27:35 from shlomif

Introducing CPANHQ and a Response to Limbic Region's "Improving search.cpan.org (Advanced Search)"

Limbic Region recently wrote a post on his use Perl journal titled "Improving search.cpan.org (Advanced Search)". The post concludes by saying that "Feel free to add your own [ideas] - I know someone who may actually be motivated to implement some of them as an alternate to search.cpan.org is reading :-)". Since I talked with L~R about CPANHQ, a seacrch.capn.org alternative in question, that I have been contributing to, I can assume meant me.

Before I reply to L~R's points, let me introduce CPANHQ. As documented in the first and only wiki page it has so far (which I wrote two days ago), "CPANHQ aims to be a community-driven, meta-data-enhanced alternative to such sites as http://search.cpan.org/ and http://kobesearch.cpan.org/. Currently, the functionality is very basic, but we have great ambitions."

I learned about CPANHQ by overhearing a conversation on Freenode's #perl channel. I joined the effort, and made several enhancements to the Catalyst and DBIx-Class-based code, which was a useful learning experience. The functionality is still very basic, and there's a lot of work to do, so any help would be appreciated. Just fork the github repository ( or my repository, which I tend to keep somewhat more up-to-date ), and play with the code.

Now back to L~R's suggestions. At first I was a bit sceptical of them and they seemed like an overkill, and not really useful. When I'm using search.cpan.org to search for a distribution, either I know the name of the module that I'm looking for and just perform a search to be directed to the location of the exact page, or I usually find the order of the search sufficient for my needs.

However, on a second reading, it seems like what Limbic suggests (like being able to sort results by Kwalitee, creation date, number of downloads, last update date, rating, etc., providing a code search, or recommendations) actually has some merit and should be considered. One thing I'm sure about is that the default CPAN search should remain simple, while only giving an option for an advances search using a different form, where it might be possible to formulate a more complex query using a specialised language. Otherwise, if we complicate the existing search, it could prove confusing to many users.

L~R's suggestions remind me of my CPAN Module-Rank thought experiment, that aimed to define an automatically calculated metric for the relevance of CPAN modules.

L~R later referred me to a post to Perlmonks.org titled "Advanced CPAN Search?" where someone asks a similar question.

To sum up, please consider monitoring or even contributing to CPANHQ if you want to improve the future of finding stuff and interacting with CPAN. It seems that some people have issue with the current CPAN search state-of-the-art, and would like to see it improved. We'd be happy to hear what you think.

Syndicated 2009-06-28 11:58:28 from shlomif

Maintenance Freecell Solver 2.32.1 Release

Hot on the heels of Freecell Solver 2.32.0, there's now a 2.32.1 maintenance release available from the download page. This release fixes several important build bugs, especially on Windows, but also on UNIXes.

Please test it to see if any other problems remain.

Syndicated 2009-06-26 10:41:00 from shlomif

Freecell Solver 2.32.0 was Released

Freecell Solver version 2.32.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from the download page.

This version features a large code cleanup which also resulted in a substantial speed boost. The code cleanup was guided by a script that was written to list all occurences of identifiers with the same name, in order to find uncommon identifiers.

There were several bug-fixes done to the CMake-based build system, and there's now suppot for Google's tcmalloc and hidden internal identifiers in the DLL/shared-library. The inline keyword for definining inline functions is now supported on more compilers and more functions or macros have been converted to inline functions.

We hope you enjoy this release.

Syndicated 2009-06-24 13:36:00 from shlomif

Tel Aviv FOSS Meeting on 28-June-2009: Programming Red Flags

The Tel Aviv Open Source Club will host a talk by Yaron Meiry ("Sawyer") about "Programming Red Flags") on 28-June-2009.

The meeting will take place at Tel Aviv University, at the Schreiber Maths&CS building, room 008 on 18:30. So mark your calendars. More information can be found on the wiki page for the meeting.

Attendance is free, it is not necessary to RSVP and everyone are welcome.

With any other problems, feel free to contact me.

Abstract

Some programming habits should be avoided at all costs; some should be considered with care and some are just divine. Red flags tell us what to try and avoid and what to inspect more closely. They are a sign of code that might become problematic or straightforwardly dangerous. The talk will be Perl-oriented (with Perl examples) but the programming practices are generic and can be applied to most programming languages, so if you program in Ruby, Python, PHP or other languages, this talks to you as well.

Hopefully by the time we're done, you'll be able to write cleaner, more maintainable, less error-prone, and better code. If not, your money back guarantee!

Syndicated 2009-06-21 11:14:44 from shlomif