I am looking for a CVS equivalent to $id:$ in Accurev.
Before you start talking compile-time scripts - my major caveat is that a lot of my stuff is in Perl - so I can't do any of the normal "compile-time tricks" - as there really isn't much of any "compile-time" stuff.
I don't really want to require external files to define this stuff, as if (god forbid) the external definition files got out-of-sync with the actual scripts, etc...
I know I could always do some sort of compile-time preprocessor on the script files (to rewrite them) - but if there is a cleaner or better-integrated way of doing so (like "$id:$" I'd appreciate anyone ideas).
Before we get into more specifics, have you taken a look at the pre-keep trigger example AccuRev provides, addheader.pl?
You can find the example in the /AccuRev/examples/addheader.pl location.
Cheers,
~James
Related
Analyzing sources of CPAN modules I can see something like this:
...
package # hide from PAUSE
Try::Tiny::ScopeGuard;
...
Obviously, it's taken from Try::Tiny, but I have seen this kind of comments between package keyword and package identifier in other modules too.
Why this procedure is used? What is its goal and what benefits does it have?
It is indeed a hack to hide a package from PAUSE's indexer.
When a distribution is uploaded to PAUSE, the indexer will examine each file in the upload, looking for the names of packages that are included in the distribution. Any indexed packages can show up in CPAN search results.
There are many reasons for not wanting the indexer to discover your packages. Your distribution may have many small or insignificant packages that would clutter up the search results for your module. You may have packages defined in your t (test) directory or some other non-standard directory that are not meant to be installed as part of the distribution. Your distribution may include files from a completely different distribution (that somebody else wrote).
The hack works because the indexer strictly looks for the keyword package and an expression that looks like a package name on the same line.
Nowadays, you can include a META.yml file with your distribution. The PAUSE indexer will look for and respect a no_index specification in this file. But this is a relatively new capability of the indexer so older modules and old-timer CPAN contributors will still use the line break hack.
Here's an example of a no_index spec from Forks::Super
no_index:
directory:
- t
- inc
package:
- Sys::CpuAffinity
- Signals::XSIG
- Signals::XSIG::Default
- Signals::XSIG::TieArray56
Sys::CpuAffinity and Signals::XSIG are separate distributions that are also packaged with Forks::Super. Some of the test scripts contain package declarations (e.g., Arbitrary::Test::Package) that shouldn't be indexed.
Okay, here's another shot at this phenomenon ... I've been whacky-hacking Perl for a dozen years and I've rarely seen this packy hack and possibly simply ignored and never bothered to investigate. One thing seems clear, though. There's some hackish processing going on at PAUSE that's been crafted in the good ol' Perl'n'UNIX school of thought that without the shadow of a doubt involves line-oriented text parsing, so they parse those Perl files, possibly even using grep, but rather perl itself, who knows, to extract package names and then kick of some procedure or get some stats or whatnot. And to trip up this procedure and hack around its ways the author splits the package declaration in two lines so the hacky packy grep job doesn't have a clue that there's a package declared right under its nose and the programmer is happy about his hacky skills and the PAUSE stats or whatever it is they're cobbling together are as they should be. Does that make sense?
Although programming using the CLI$ routines is not very hard, it would be nice if there were a code generator for the basic stuff based on the CLD file. Does anyone have something like that, or is there anyone interested in it?
There is a code generator of sorts at http://www.tomwade.eu/software/vmsarg.html
This is designed for when you're porting a C program onto VMS that is set up to use the typical terse and unfriendly qualifiers like
$ mumble -f -l foo.txt
that Unix loves. It generates code that allows the program to accept
$ mumble /fast /log=foo.txt
and translates it into the hieroglyphics that the program expects. Add CLD like functionality to the program with minimal C coding.
It sounds like you have used enough of the features of CLDs that it would be a project to write a TECO macro to massage the CLD into the corresponding MUMPS code. (Sorry, wrong language?) Even LIB$TPARSE, or its Alpha replacement, would take some time to wrangle. Sounds like you have a "boring job" ahead of you, or a co-op. (Named for the sound it makes when it hits the wall.) Or find a YACC guru or someone with facility at various other parsing tools and turn them loose.
We're struggling to come up with a command name for our all purpose "developer helper" tool, which we are using on our project. It's like a wrapper for our existing tools like cmake and hg. The purpose of the command is really just to make our lives easier by combining multiple commands into one (for example, publishing packages). For example, we have commands like:
do conf
do build
do install
do publish
We've considered a few ambiguous names like do (as above) and run, but obviously, do is a Linux bash command and run is pretty ambiguous.
We'd like our command to be 2 chars short, preferably - but who thinks we're asking the impossible? Is there a practical way to check the availability of command names (other than just typing them into your terminal), or is it just a case of choose one and hope nobody else will use it? Are we worrying about nothing?
Since it's a "developer helper" tool why not use hm [run|build|port|deploy|test], Help Me ...
Give it a verbose name, then let everyone alias it to whatever they want. Make sure you use the verbose name in other scripts so that it removes ambiguity.
This way, each user gets to use whatever makes sense to him/her, and the scripts are more readable and more easily searchable (for example, grepping four "our_cool_tool" will usually yield better results than grepping for "run").
How many 2-character words are useful in this context? I think you need four. With that in mind, here are some suggestions.
omni
torq
fluf
mega
spif
crnk
splt
argh
quat
drul
scud
prun
sqat
zoom
sizl
I have more if you need them.
Pick one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_all_two-letter_combinations
To check the availability of command names, I suggest looking for all two-letter filenames that are in the directories in your path. You can use a script like this
for item in `echo $PATH | sed 's/:/ /g'` ; do
ls -1d $item/??
done
It won't show builtins in your shell (like "do" as you mentioned) but it's a good start.
Change ?? to ??? for three-letter files, etc.
I'm going to vote for qp (quick package?) since it's easy to pronounce, easy to type, and easy to remember where the keys are on the keyboard.
I use "asd". it's short and most developers type it without thinking
(oh, and you can always claim later that it stands for some "Advanced Script for Developers" if you need to justify yourself a few years from now)
How about fu? As in Kung Fu. It's a special purpose tool. And it's really easy to type.
I think that run is a good name, at least anybody that will download your project will know what to do. Calling it without parameters should reveal your options.
Even 'do' will do, I think you can use backquotes to run it from bash scripts.
Also remember that running the tools without parameters will tell you what options you have.
Use makefiles to do everything for you.
How about calling it something descriptive, like 'build_runner', and then just aliasing it to 'br' (or preferred acronym) in your .bashrc?
There is a really crappy tool called cleartool (part of clearcase), and people will alias it on their machine to "ct". Perhaps you can have a longer command and suggest users alias it.
It would probably be best to do something like ire_and_curses suggested, name it descriptively then alias it to a 2 letter command. If I was choosing, I would name it dev_help and alias it to dh.
I think you're worrying about nothing. Install the program as 'the-command-to-do-evertyhing-and-if-you-dont-make-your-own-alias-for-it-you-should'. I don't think that will be too long for any modern filesystems, but you might need to shorten it to 'tctdeaiydmyoafiys'. See what common aliases are used, and then change the program's name to that. In other words: don't decide, let natural selection decide for you. If you are working with a team of < 10, this should not even remotely cause any problems.
Call it devtool alias to dt
Custom tools like that I like to start with the prefix 'jj-'. I can type (with big index-finger power) 'jj ' and see all my personal commands. Also, they group together in alphabetical lists. 'J' is not a very common character for built-inc commands, but you can pick your own.
Since you want two characters, you can use just 'zz', or something starting with 'z'.
Are you sure you want to put all your functionality in one command? That might be simultaneously over-constraining and over-loading the interface a little.
do conf
do build
do install
do publish
What patterns contribute or detract from the usability of a CLI interface?
As an example consider the CLI for ClearCase. The CLI is very comprehensive (+1) but it is has several glaring opportunities. Recently, I wanted to force the files to lower case into ClearCase using clearfsimport. Unfortunately I wound up on the documentation for its cousin clearimport. It may seem slight but it cost me more hours than I care to admit. The variation in the middle got me.
Why provide such nearly identical functionality with such nearly identical names? There are many better options in my opinion
clearimport -fs
fsclearimport
clear_fs_import
clearimport_fs
Anything would be better than what they went with. The code I am working on IS a CLI and this experience made me look at my own choices. I think I have all the basics covered (standard help, long-form vs short-form, short meaningful names, providing examples, eliminate ambiguity, accurately handling spaces within quotes, etc).
There is some literature on this subject.
Perhaps a bad CLI is no different than a bad API. CLI are type of an API in some sense. The goals are naturally common:: flexibility, readability, and completeness. Several factors differentiate CLI from a typical API. One is that CLI needs to support scriptability (participate many times perhaps in a series of pipes). Another is that autocompletion and namespaces don't exist in the same way. You don't always have a nice colorful GUI doing stuff for you. CLIs must document themselves externally to customer directly. And finally the audience of a CLI is vastly different than the standard API. I appreciate any insight you may have.
I like the subcommand pattern, which I'm most familiar with as its implemented in the command-line Subversion client.
svn [subcommand] [options] [files]
Without the subcommands, subversion would have waaaaay too many different options for me to remember them effectively, and the help system would be a pain to slog through.
But, if I don't remember how any particular subcommand works, I can just type:
svn help [subcommand]
...and it shows me only the relevant portions of the help documentation.
As noted above, this format:
[master verb] [subverb] [optionally, noun] [options]
is good in terms of remembering what commands are available. cvs, svn, Perforce, git, all adhere to this. It improves discoverability of commands, a major CLI problem. One wrinkle that occurs here is options for the master-verb vs. options for the subverb. I.e.,
cvs -d dir command bar
is different than
cvs command -d dir bar
This was a confusing situation in cvs, which svn "fixed" by allowing options specified in any order. Your own solution may vary; if you have a very good reason to pass options to the master verb, okay, just be aware of the overhead.
Looking to API usability is a good idea too, but beware that there is no real typing in CLI commands, and there is a lot of richness in what CLI commands 'return', since you've got both a return code and an output to work with. In the unixy/streams world, the output is usually much more important than the return code. Getting the format of your output right is crucial. Also, while tempting, I've found that sending different things to stdout vs. stderr is not always useful; it confuses novice and even intermediate users (because they both get dumped to console in most cases), and rarely is useful advanced users. So unless there's a real need for it I avoid it; it's too easy for (e.g.) someone to get very confused about why the output of a command was '' in an error condition just because the programmer nicely dumped the errors to stderr.
Another issue in design is the "what next" problem. In a GUI, the next steps for the user are spelled out by the available buttons, menus, etc. In a CLI, the user can literally type any command next, and pipe any command to any other. (Or try, at least.) I design my commands to give hints (either in the help or the output) as to what potential next steps might be in a typical workflow.
Another good pattern is allowing user customization of the output. While it is possible for users to use cut, sort, etc. to tailor the output, being able to specify a format string magnifies the utility of a command. The example I cite here is top, which lets you tell it which columns you want.
One I am aware of is Perl::Critic
And my googling has resulted in no results on multiple attempts so far. :-(
Does anyone have any recommendations here?
Any resources to configure Perl::Critic as per our coding standards and run it on code base would be appreciated.
In terms of setting up a profile, have you tried perlcritic --profile-proto? This will emit to stdout all of your installed policies with all their options with descriptions of both, including their default values, in perlcriticrc format. Save and edit to match what you want. Whenever you upgrade Perl::Critic, you may want to run this command again and do a diff with your current perlcriticrc so you can see any changes to existing policies and pick up any new ones.
In terms of running perlcritic regularly, set up a Test::Perl::Critic test along with the rest of your tests. This is good for new code.
For your existing code, use Test::Perl::Critic::Progressive instead. T::P::C::Progressive will succeed the first time you run it, but will save counts on the number of violations; thereafter, T::P::C::Progressive will complain if any of the counts go up. One thing to look out for is when you revert changes in your source control system. (You are using one, aren't you?) Say I check in a change and run tests and my changes reduce the number of P::C violations. Later, it turns out my change was bad, so I revert to the old code. The T::P::C::Progressive test will fail due to the reduced counts. The easiest thing to do at this point is to just delete the history file (default location t/.perlcritic-history) and run again. It should reproduce your old counts and you can write new stuff to bring them down again.
Perl::Critic has a lot of policies that ship with it, but there are a bunch of add-on distributions of policies. Have a look at Task::Perl::Critic and
Task::Perl::Critic::IncludingOptionalDependencies.
You don't need to have a single perlcriticrc handle all your code. Create separate perlcriticrc files for each set of files you want to test and then a separate test that points to each one. For an example, have a look at the author tests for P::C itself at http://perlcritic.tigris.org/source/browse/perlcritic/trunk/Perl-Critic/xt/author/. When author tests are run, there's a test that runs over all the code of P::C, a second test that applies additional rules just on the policies, and a third one that criticizes P::C's tests.
I personally think that everyone should run at the "brutal" severity level, but knock out the policies that they don't agree with. Perl::Critic isn't entirely self compliant; even the P::C developers don't agree with everything Conway says. Look at the perlcriticrc files used on Perl::Critic itself and search the Perl::Critic code for instances of "## no critic"; I count 143 at present.
(Yes, I'm one of the Perl::Critic developers.)
There is perltidy for most stylistic standards. perlcritic can be easily configured using a .perlcritic file. I personally use the it at level one, but I've disabled a few policies.
In addition to 'automated frameworks', I highly recommend Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices. I don't agree with 100% of what he suggests, but most of the time he's bang on.
The post above mentioning Devel::Prof probably really means Devel::Cover (to get the code coverage of a test suite).
Like:
http://metacpan.org/pod/Perl::Critic
http://www.slideshare.net/joshua.mcadams/an-introduction-to-perl-critic/
Looks like a nice tool!
A nice combination is perlcritic with EPIC for Eclipse - hit CTRL-SHIFT-C (or your preferred configured shortcut) and your code is marked up with warning indicators wherever perlcritic has found something to complain about. Much nicer than remembering to run it before checkin. And as normal with perlcritic, it will pick up your .perlcriticrc so you can customise the rules. We keep our .perlcriticrc in version control so everyone gets the same standards.
In addition to the cosmetic best practices, I always find it useful to run Devel::Prof on my unit test suite to check test coverage.