NAME

Dist::Zilla::Plugin::LogContextual - Set up Log::Contextual for use with Dist::Zilla

VERSION

version 0.001000

DESCRIPTION

Log::Contextual is a context driven Logging facility that aims to provide cross-cutting log mechanisms.

However, the way it works means that if nobody starts an initial set_logger call, the logs may go nowhere. Or something.

I don't really understand it all fully, so I'm implementing what I know to learn it better.

TL;DR

One day dzil may do this out of the box [citation needed]

However, otherwise, if you have any plugins or tools or whatnot that want to use Log::Contextual, you'll need to load this plugin first.

[LogContextual]
; plugins with Log::Contextual in them should work nao

TIPS ON USING Log::Contextual

Using Log::Contextual with Dist::Zilla is not entirely painless.

Notably, because the role Dist::Zilla::Role::Plugin exports a few logging methods with the same name as Log::Contextual.

This has the unfortunate side effect of meaning the following wont work:

use Moose;
use Log::Contextual::LogDispatchouli  qw( log_debug );
with 'Dist::Zilla::Role::Plugin';

sub foo {
    log_debug {  }; # messes up and tries to call the log_debug method provided by $self->logger
}

There's an easy way around this, but it doesn't seem obvious at first glance.

use Moose;
use Log::Contextual::LogDispatchouli qw( log_debug );
use namespace::autoclean;
with 'Dist::Zilla::Role::Plugin';

sub foo {
    log_debug {  }; # Now works
}

If you're confused, that is quite o.k.

But its sensible once you understand how.

Essentially, because the log_debug sub is removed at compile time, all calls to that become fixed, instead of flexible.

So here's how perl processes the above code:

# COMPILE PHASE
use Moose;
use Log::Contextual::LogDispatchouli qw( log_debug );
use namespace::autoclean;

sub foo {
    log_debug {  }; # BINDS this call to the imported sub
}

# END OF COMPILE PHASE
# namespace::autoclean removes *log_debug forcing the bind
# RUNTIME
with  'Dist::Zilla::Role::Plugin'; # Cant change compile-time things.

Its not 100% ideal, but it works!.

CAVEATS

• NO PREFIXES

  At this time, The nice pretty [Foo/Bar] prefix from $plugin->plugin_name is not supported.

  We're not sure if it ever will, it probably will, but the code makes my head hurt at present.

  Was better to release something, albeit feature incomplete, than to release nothing at all.

• REQUIRES ::LogDispatchouli subclass

  This seems in contrast to the Log::Contextual design principles, things invoking loggers shouldn't care about how they're working, just they should work.

  I'm Hoping in a future release of ::LogDispatchouli that it can transparently do the right thing when calling code simply does

  use Log::Contextual

  So the Dispatchouli is strictly top level knowledge.

  But I'll wait for updates on how that should work before I make it work that way =)

AUTHOR

Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com>.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.