Shawn Sorichetti wrote:
Test::Output 0.05 has been released.
Renaming thread since only the OP referred to Test::Output.
It occurs to me that the Test::* and ExtUtils::* modules should be the first stop for the Phalanx project. :)
At least as originally proposed by project leader Andy Lester, Phalanx was supposed to focus on *non-core*, but widely used distributions. The rationale for this approach, IIRC, was that, for better or worse, there already was a peer-review approach to those modules distributed as core.
I know there are core modules whose test coverage I would like to see improved, and there's nothing stopping anyone from applying tools such as Devel::Cover to core modules and submitting patches to their authors or p5p or whomever is appropriate. Until I hear different from Andy, I'm going to proceed on the assumption that Phalanx is for non-core modules.
(Parenthetical rant: As I have found from my own work both in a Phalanx context and from submitting patches to other authors' modules, the single most difficult thing has nothing to do with code, tests or coverage; it's getting the author to give you feedback once you've submitted your proposed revisions.)
Incidentally, is it acceptable for an author to Phalanx-review his own module, or does that defeat the peer-reviewed-ness of it? I'm about to upload my first module, and if Phalanx has some kind of check list that must be satisfied to have the Phalanx-approval-seal (is there one?), then I'd be happy to go through it.There is no such seal of approval. You have done well by getting feedback on your idea on the local list, perl.module-authors and this list before uploading it. Write some tests, get it up there and let the world take a crack at it.
Random thought: Could Devel::Cover be automatically run against all modules in CPAN, with ratings posted on cpan.org right next to the usual test results?As others have already pointed out, this is not a good idea, because a module's overall coverage rating conceals as much as it reveals. Among other things, unless you write your documentation in Pod::Coverage's default format (which is used by Devel::Cover in its default setting), you will get a lousy POD coverage rating, which in turn will bring down your distro's overall rating. Text::Template, to cite one example, is well documented but not written in the Pod::Coverage-correct format, so its documentation gets rated zilch. Devel::Cover -- like coverage analysis in general -- is a diagnostic tool. That's why it's in the Devel:: TLNS. It's not like testers.cpan.org, which is more focused on the question of whether a distro successfully built or not on a wide variety of OSes.
Jim Keenan
