These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• So you want to write a Perl 6 module? (ttjjss.wordpress.com)
• What is the Japan Perl Association and what does it do? (mt.endeworks.jp)
• My first patch to Rakudo Perl 6: (mail-archive.com)
• A reminder to HR folks: It's Perl, not PERL. (jobs.perl.org)
• David Golden cuts through some Rakudo Star snark (dagolden.com)
• I'm glad to hear "Rakudo is slow!" (perlbuzz.com)
• Rakudo Star means Perl 6 questions are on the rise at Perlmonks (perlgeek.de)
• Perl is not an acronym (perlbuzz.com)
• 45m of video interview w/Larry Wall, creator of Perl http://bigthink.com/larrywall (via @theory and @sachmet)
• Top three languages at github: Ruby, JavaScript, Perl (r-chart.com)
• CPAN Testers must convert from email to HTTP by Sep 1st (log.perl.org)
• First impressions of Perl 6 from blog "Mad, Beautiful Ideas", which seems appropriate for Perl 6 (blog.foxxtrot.net)
• Devel::CheckLib needs a new maintainer (blogs.perl.org)
• Rakudo bugs are love (use.perl.org)
• HTTP::BrowserDetect has been freshly updated (blogs.perl.org)
• What's on your to-do list? Here's mine: (perlbuzz.com)
• pudge on the uncertain future of use.perl.org (use.perl.org)
• The 2010 White Camel awards (blogs.perl.org)
• Perlmonks poll: My first impression of Rakudo Star... (perlmonks.org)
• Vim 7.3 supports Perl 6, adds Perl 5 improvements (perlbuzz.com)
• Improving Perl sub detection in git diffs (blogs.perl.org)
• Perl Foundation news site gets a redesign (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Switching to Dist::Zilla: A usage report (blogs.perl.org)
• Temporarily delete hash keys or array elements with "delete local" (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Run PHP tests in your Perl test suite (perlbuzz.com)
• What is the "Cool" class in Perl 6? (perlgeek.de)
• I'm playing with the ack.vim plugin. I like it much. (vim.org)
• Alien::SVN has a new owner, for those of you still hooking into Subversion (use.perl.org)
• WWW::Salesforce gets a long-awaited update (blogs.perl.org)
• Don't discount the value of indirect PR. A mention of Perl 6 is a mention of Perl 6. (pcworld.com)
• Which Perl XML module should I use to...? (blogs.perl.org)
• Video of Tim Bunce's talk about DBDI for Perl 6: (blip.tv)
• Videos from YAPC::EU available (Thanks @sachmet) (conferences.yapceurope.org)
• Allison Randal is now working full time at Ubuntu (allisonrandal.com)
• Non-technical strategies for getting people on board with technological change (everythingsysadmin.com)
• Useful side effects of Perl testing culture (xrl.us)
• Idiomatic Perl 6 (use.perl.org)

Sometimes you've got a big codebase that isn't just Perl. Maybe you've got PHP mixed in with it, and you want to test the PHP along with all the Perl code, too. Perl's prove program doesn't care if the testing results it parses are from Perl, PHP or even static files, so long as they're in the TAP format. However, actually getting prove to run those PHP programs takes a little doing. Fortunately, Test::Harness 3.xx has hooks for source handlers.

David Wheeler has written about running PostgreSQL tests under prove in his blog and I stole from his code shamelessly to create TAP::Parser::SourceHandler::PHP, released to the CPAN this morning.

So now, to run the Perl .t files and the PHP .phpt files all in one swell foop, here's what we do at work:

prove -r \
    -I/home/alester/proj/Lib \
    --source=Perl --ext=.t \
    --source=PHP \
    --ext=.phpt \
    --php-option=include_path=/home/alester/proj/Class \
    --php-option=extension=.phpt

That --source=PHP tells prove to load up TAP::Parser::SourceHandler::PHP. The --php-option tells prove to pass those options through to the SourceHandler. If we had PostgreSQL tests or MySQL tests, we could use the SourceHandlers for those that David Wheeler has written as well.

Now we can test everything all in one run, and we get all the benefits of Test::Harness 3.xx, like parallel tests and TAP archiving and so on.

These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• Running tests in MySQL with Perl via MyTAP (justatheory.com)
• chromatic rebuts the FUD of startup times for Rakudo Star (modernperlbooks.com)
• Top 10 tricks of Perl one-liners (blog.ksplice.com)
• A checklist for writing maintainable Perl (modernperlbooks.com)
• A gentle introduction to Perl 6 with Rakudo Star (blogs.perl.org)
• Opening Perl modules with vim (blogs.perl.org)
• Your Perl test suite is broken (blogs.perl.org)
• Diving into Perl 6 (perlbuzz.com)
• What's up with Proud To Use Perl (http://proudtouseperl.com/) Are people no longer proud?
• Why are Perl web apps less popular than those in PHP? (blogs.perl.org)
• Perl 5 and Perl 6 are different languages, and that's a good thing (use.perl.org)
• Perl 6 is easier to read than write (blogs.perl.org)
• The official Perl 6 cheat sheet (svn.pugscode.org)
• Currying with Perl 6 (perlgeek.de)
• Try Rakudo and learn Perl 6 in your browser: (try.rakudo.org)
• Perl 6 has data dumping baked right in (perlbuzz.com)
• What to respond to "Perl 6 isn't Perl any more" (perlbuzz.com)
• How to write about Perl 6 (blogs.perl.org)
• When should I use database abstraction? (blogs.perl.org)
• Videos from YAPC::NA (presentingperl.org)
• What I learned at YAPC::EU 2010 (blogs.perl.org)
• Where to now in Rakudo Perl 6 development? How to speed up Rakudo? (perlgeek.de)
• Colorized code snippets on an ANSI terminal (blogs.perl.org)

These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• NYTProf 4.04 now warns if it sees $`, $\& or $\', which are regex performance killers (blog.timbunce.org)
• Facebook::Graph automates Facebook interactions (blogs.perl.org)
• Iterating your way to happiness with Perl 6 (use.perl.org)
• Perlcast returns with an interview with Stevan Little about Moose (perlcast.com)
• CPAN on your iPhone (blogs.perl.org)
• YAPC::NA 2011 will be in Asheville, NC (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Ten years of Perl 6 and all the goodness it's brought (use.perl.org)
• Fixing my #1 bash annoyance (perlbuzz.com)
• Wedge more text in your tweets with Unicode abuse (blogs.perl.org)
• Ingy's take on Rakduo Perl 6: It's really ready (blogs.perl.org)
• Convert Perl POD to ePub format for your iPhone (blogs.perl.org)
• I would love to see something like this for the Perl standard modules (ruby-doc.org)
• Six cool Perl 6 built-ins (use.perl.org)
• Outsider recap of Larry's 2010 State of the Onion (pcworld.com)
• Template Toolkit + vim users, the tt2.vim and tt2html.vim files are now part of vim-perl (github.com)
• All about Perl 5.12's deprecation warnings (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Github is now at one million projects (techcrunch.com)
• Common Perl 6 idioms (perlgeek.de)
• The Moose Blog (blog.moose.perl.org)
• Modern Perl vs. Desperate Perl (bofh.org.uk)
• Per-computer colored prompts in bash (geofft.mit.edu)
• Someone perceives Perl as old, dying. You can either A) Argue, or B) Do awesomeness with Perl to prove him wrong. I suggest B.
• Why roles in Perl are awesome (perlbuzz.com)

These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• Detect regex-slowing match variables in your code (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• JT Smith talks WebGUI and plugs modern Perl tools (sourceforge.net)
• Rakudo Star, the first usable release of Rakudo Perl 6, coming on July 29, 2010 (use.perl.org)
• Schwern's perl5i makes Perl 5 awesomer until Perl 6 comes along. (search.cpan.org)
• Perl 5 wiki gets big upgrade (news.perlfoundation.org)
• RT @morungos Devel::SawAmpersand just helped us find and protect against a 200x slowdown in our code!
• RT @pjf Watching @szabgab's Perl on Android talk. Awesome to see it in action. Download at (code.google.com)
• Dist::Zooky converts your existing distributions to Dist::Zilla distros (blogs.perl.org)
• "dzil setup" will make Dist::Zilla easier to get started out of the box (rjbs.manxome.org)
• Validation is overrated (sethgodin.typepad.com)
• Should perlfoundation.org move to WebGUI? (blogs.perl.org)
• What performance increases can we expect as the Perl 6 implementations mature? (stackoverflow.com)
• The draft of @chromatic_x's "Modern Perl: The Book" is now available for review (modernperlbooks.com)
• YAPC::NA 2010 technology overview (blogs.perl.org)
• Four fundamental concepts every Perler should know (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• A user looking for help installing Perl 6: (superuser.com)
• Announcing CPAN Testers 2.0 (blogs.perl.org)
• Using Growl from the command line (blogs.perl.org)
• Installing CPAN modules on SOlaris 10 (blogs.perl.org)
• The marketing of Perl (blogs.perl.org)

Diversification in bug tracking has come to the CPAN. Module users cannot assume that the bug tracker for an individual module is at rt.cpan.org. Before submitting bug reports, users should check the distribution's page on search.cpan.org for a link to the bug tracker, and also check the documentation for the module. When in doubt, go with the documentation.

It used to be simpler....

Over ten years ago, when CPAN only had a few thousand distributions, and free project hosting was Sourceforge or nothing, Jesse Vincent stepped up to create rt.cpan.org. It was, and is, a fantastic service. Module authors now had free, centralized bug reporting that they didn't have to maintain themselves.

Jesse's RT setup also has the advantage of integrating with PAUSE and the CPAN. CPAN is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, and PAUSE is the Perl Author Upload Server. When a module author has a distribution for release, she uploads the file to PAUSE. From there, the servers that make up the network part of CPAN mirror the file for your use. Jesse set up RT to check the PAUSE for new distributions, and when one was found, RT would automatically create a bug queue for that module. It's still a fantastic system, and we should all thank Jesse for maintaining it.

For years, the Perl community has been enjoying the fruits of rt.cpan.org. It's become part of Perl culture. The home page for each module on search.cpan.org includes links to the RT page. When authors create modules with Module::Starter, the module's documentation refers the reader to the specific bug queue. People just knew that it was there. Everyone knew you could email to bug-distro-name@rt.cpan.org to have a bug reported.

But RT has never been the the only bug tracker available, and the alternatives are getting more and more use. SourceForge has had bug tracking for quite a while, but when Google Code came out with project hosting and bug tracking, things started changing. Now, Github has taken the Perl world by storm. For the first time ever, we module authors had solid alternatives to RT that we didn't have to create ourselves.

That leads us to today, where the Perl world is continuing to diversify. Module authors can choose the bug tracking system that suits them, and their users, best. That system may no longer be RT.

Which bug trackers are getting used?

When I checked last week, I found 106 distributions that were using bug trackers other than RT, spread across 10 different domains.

For example:

• http://code.google.com/p/perldts/issues/list
• http://github.com/ap/Object-Tiny-Lvalue/issues
• https://gna.org/bugs/?group=testautobuild
• http://sdlperl.ath.cx/projects/SDLPerl
• https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/
• http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=199719
• http://padre.perlide.org/trac/
• http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/
• https://openmelody.lighthouseapp.com/projects/26604-melody
• http://www.veripool.org/ipc-locker-bugs

I was surprised the number of distributions was only 106. I suspect that there are many module authors who don't know how to specify an alternate bug tracker in their distributions. In my next article, I'll explain how to do that.

The dual-licensing in much module boilerplate these days is unnecessary. You can simplify your licensing by using only the Artistic License 2.0.

There are plenty of modules out there that license themselves "under the same terms as Perl itself", and there are problems with that approach. For the past year or so I've been using the approach of being explicit about "Artistic or GPL, your choice", but that's unnecessary, too.

According to Allison Randal, one of the architects of Artistic License 2.0, "Artistic 2 allows for any GPL-like license, not just GPL 2. Specifically, it allows for GPL 3 or later, or a completely non-GPL copyleft license. So, the dual license is unnecessary."

There's a page on the Perl Foundation website about CPAN licensing guidelines that explains more options in more detail.

From here on out, my code is going to say:

=head1 LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2010, Andy Lester,

This module is free software.  You can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• White House releases open source code (perlbuzz.com)
• Use DBI_TRACE to track DBI (and DBIx::Class, etc) (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Learn to use Dist::Zilla in this interactive tutorial (dzil.org)
• I love Github. They properly render my POD docs when browsing a project: (github.com)
• What's David Golden working on in Perl these days? (dagolden.com)
• Perl + Parrot projects accepted for Google Summer of Code (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Object::ID - A unique object identifier for any object (use.perl.org)
• YAPC::NA 2010 schedule announced (yapc2010.com)
• How you can contribute to Perl 6, without huge startup costs (blogs.perl.org)
• To InformationWeek/DrDobbs re: static code analysis (perlbuzz.com)
• RJBS' final report on 2010Q1 TPF grant work for Dist::Zilla (rjbs.manxome.org)
• dzil new - using Dist::Zilla to start new dists (rjbs.manxome.org)
• Free sample chapter of the new edition of Effective Perl Programming (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• New programming jargon (via @sachmet) (globalnerdy.com)
• The Perl Foundation appoints new Grant Managers (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Perl Foundation posts new rules for grants (news.perlfoundation.org)
• What is Kephra, and how does it differ from Padre? (blogs.perl.org)
• The more time we spend on "women in computing", the less time we have to actually get stuff done. (terriko.dreamwidth.org)
• Perl 5.12.1 released (blog.fsck.com)
• GSoC: Ryan Jendoubi's overview of his ctypes project (blogs.perl.org)
• Use each() on an array in Perl 5.12 (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Interview w/Damian Conway (oreillygmt.co.uk)
• Making Test::Harness show a progress bar (blogs.perl.org)
• Trying to resurrect my Mechanix blog with a handy tip on SSH key handling (perlbuzz.com)
• How to shuffle a list in Perl (perlbuzz.com)

These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• Slides for "Fishing for Perl: The New User Experience" (blogs.perl.org)
• I'm seeing more mentions of Plack lately, but know nothing about it. Perlbuzz would welcome an article about it.
• I discuss business cards, resumes and how you want to be remembered in my latest column (pragprog.com)
• What would a completely different CPAN client do? (blogs.perl.org)
• On the problems with libraries, with discussion of the CPAN specifically (pragprog.com)
• WWW::Mechanize 1.62 released (search.cpan.org)
• Action photos from the Perl QA Hackathon (blogs.perl.org)
• Use /gc and \G in matches to separate alternations in separate, smaller patterns (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• What's come out of the Perl QA Hackathon? Day 2 wrap-up (blogs.perl.org)
• Bricolage 2.0 has been released (bricolagecms.org)
• Jesse Vincent on the new Perl 5.12.x maintenance plan (nntp.perl.org)
• Test::WWW::Mechanize released, finally fixes install failures (search.cpan.org)
• Perl 5.12 has been released (search.cpan.org)
• Announcement and notes for Perl 5.12 (lwn.net)
• Pod::Site is a nice POD browser from @theory. Demo: http://www.bricolagecms.org/docs/current/api/
• Jan Dubois on the return of momentum to Perl 5 development (blogs.activestate.com)
• What's new in Perl 5.12? (search.cpan.org)
• Is cpanminus the future? (blogs.perl.org)
• Aggregating the coverage of Perl 5.12 (blogs.perl.org)
• Survey: What is your primary OS for Perl app development? (perlide.org)
• The Second Age of Perl (blogs.perl.org)

These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com.

• Falling out of love with a language (bofh.org.uk)
• RT @artmonstergirl I like my regular expressions same as my men, powerful, yet confusing, and not really quite what I intended.
• Avoid accidentally creating methods from module exports (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Google Talk with Perl (blogs.perl.org)
• Processing XML with XML::Twig (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Polishing NYTProf 3.0 with 3.11 (blog.timbunce.org)
• Higher order MP3 organization (varlogrant.blogspot.com)
• Google Code has improved Subversion project speed (googlecode.blogspot.com)
• Perl Foundation accepted for Google Summer of Code 2010 (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Making deep copies of hashes (effectiveperlprogramming.com)
• Perl projects that should have websites (blogs.perl.org)
• Open Source Bridge 2010 is still accepting proposals (opensourcebridge.org)
• CPAN projects don't need professional looking websites (blogs.perl.org)
• The Perl Foundation gets a new president and treasurer (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Open source summer Perl jobs for college students (use.perl.org)
• sayperl.org provides translations of Perl blogs from around the world (use.perl.org)
• BioPerl accepted to Google Summer of Code (use.perl.org)
• YAPC::NA 2011 call for venue (news.perlfoundation.org)
• Some facts about Schwern (use.perl.org)
• Help englighten Perl's documentation (blogs.perl.org)
• Change your wallpaper with WWW::Mechanize (viveksnv.blogspot.com)
• OSCON Perl track announced (oscon.com)
• Distributing applications via CPAN (blogs.perl.org)
• Leo Lapworth has started a section of whitepapers on Perl.org (blogs.perl.org)
• Moose has a new website (iinteractive.com)