Darren,
I will take a stab at your questions.
On Mar 5, 2005, at 6:25 PM, Darren Duncan wrote:
Question 1: So where would I find the "To Do" code collection?
The TODO code which you are referring too is actually in the Pugs distro. If you grep the .t files you will find many todo_ok() and todo_is() tests, which have been written based upon the current Synopsis documents, but not yet implemented in Pugs. This basically amounts to a very informal TODO list for Autrijus and the other more-Haskell-inclinded perl6 folks.
I intend that my main contribution towards tests for Perl 6 is to actually produce the Perl 6 versions of the aforementioned modules, and their test suites, as soon as possible.
This would be an excellent way of contributing, but I will warn you (since I have tried to do this myself with my own CPAN modules) that much of what you will probably need is not only un-implemented, but possibly not even specified by the perl 6 language folks. Keep in mind that perl 6 as a language is still very much a moving target, and the spec is not finished yet.
However, this should not discourage you from contributing. Example code is also a driving force behind the development (metaperl and his work with Junctions is a prime example of this). I view them as being something akin to integration tests, since they typically combine a number of features in one script. Whereas the test work tends to be features in isolation. Any contributions you want to give in this department would surely be appreciated, whether is be a complete port of your module, or something smaller.
Considering the Apocryphon question on a CPAN for Perl 6 modules, I will conform by initially naming my modules into the "Perl6::lib" namespace; they will have the same names they do now but for that namespace prefix. For example, my first module will be named "Perl6::lib::Locale::KeyedText" v0.01 (which corresponds to the upcoming Locale::KeyedText v1.02).
This is currently the rough plan as I understand it. I think that Autrijus currently has the perl6 @*INC set up to start looking in Perl6/lib/ first. We also only currently have "require", and no "use" feature, so many things may change on this in the future.
Question 2: Should I just upload my ports in Perl 6 to CPAN the usual way, or do you have a special repository for "To Do" Perl 6 code that you want me to stuff it into, or should I do both?
My suggestion is too put them in the examples/* directory in the Pugs distro. When they (and Pugs) hit a certain maturity point, you can move them over to CPAN then.
Question 3: What's the deal with this Kwid thing? Is this an official replacement for Pod that I missed reading about, or is it something temporary that is used with Pugs and will have to be rewritten again later to Pod? I plan to port my docs as well as the code, so I should know whether to do it in Kwid or Pod.
Autrijus said recently that he intends Pugs to support both Kwid and Pod. If you want to write it in Kwid, go ahead. If you prefer POD go ahead. Although, this is how things were on friday afternoon (EST), they may very well have changed since then :)
Question 4: If Perl 6 code is to start being released to CPAN now, is there an already planned method for those distros to say the right things in their Makefile.PL so that the existing automated CPAN testers network can know to run them through Pugs? Or do we just have to skip automated tests for now?
Good question. I am not sure if we are far enough along to even start thinking about those details, but I suppose it's never to early to start.
Darren, I hope I have answered some of your questions. My suggestion is to come and visit us at #perl6. The development is currently going on almost 24 hours a day on a worldwide scale, and is actually quite a lot of fun, and we can always use more help.
- Steve
