Moving forward with Git and Perl
*By Nadim Khemir*
Perl is very often used as glue to quickly put together a functionality
by using already existing components. This is a great use of Perl.
Still, I believe that we made a mistake, a few years ago, when we
kept being the glue instead for also becoming part of the componnents;
this is one of the main reason Python took off, developers learned
Python, an otherwise excellent language, to control and integrate
into their favorite applications while Perl was still on the outside.
I wish Perl was an intrinsic part of more applications.
Among the applications that have Perl bindings, [Git](http://git.or.cz/)
is a very interesting one. There is a lot of interest for Git in
the Perl community. This is partly due to Perl 5's source code going
over to Git.
[Pages](http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?git)
like [this](http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?perl_git_repositories)
on the [Perl 5 wiki](http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5) tell us
that "Like Perl, Git has lots of flexbility, TIMTOWTDI" this matches
The way most Perl developers think and may be why a lot of Perl
developers are switching to Git. Git is easy to learn. Simple
things are simple and complicated things possible. Rings a bell?
There are many Perl developers involved in Git. Randal Schwartz
even made [a presentation on git](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dhZ9BXQgc4),
and we've seen
[articles here on Mechanix](http://perlbuzz.com/mechanix/2008/09/git-is-my-hero.html).
And there are multiple modules on CPAN to handle Git-related
functionality. The Git community itself has a Git.pm module that
is part of the Git distribution. Git.pm needed some love and I am
taking over its maintenance. My hope is to help the Git community and the Perl community as well.
## What's in it for the Git and Perl community?
* Involvement of the Perl community in the Perl component distributed with Git
* A closer cooperation.
* Making Perl developer aware of version control systems.
* Unify, if wished for, the multiple Git modules of CPAN (other are under
construction but not on CPAN yet), this would be better for maintenance and
for the users.
* Not directly related but a wish, a CPAN with better versioning strategy.
* What _you_ need (but you have to tell us. I'll be happy to get input from
the Perl community, at nkh@cpan.org, in the form of comments, and patches)
Jakub Narebski has written an [RFC for the Perl
bindings](http://www.spinics.net/lists/git/msg86056.html) for the
Perl bindings. This is an excellent stating point.
*[Nadim Khemir](http://search.cpan.org/~nkh) is a technical manager and architect at
Ericsson Mobile Platform in Sweden. His favorite subjects are
process automation and build systems. He can be contacted
at nkh@cpan.org and is often seen on #perl-qa.*