/ 
CPAN-Reporter-Smoker-0.01_01
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/ CPAN::Reporter::Smoker

NAME

CPAN::Reporter::Smoker - Turnkey CPAN Testers smoking

VERSION

This documentation describes version 0.01_01.

SYNOPSIS

$ perl -MCPAN::Reporter::Smoker -e start

DESCRIPTION

Rudimentary smoke tester for CPAN Testers, built upon CPAN::Reporter. Use at your own risk. It requires CPAN::Reporter 1.07_02 or higher.

Currently, CPAN::Reporter::Smoker requires zero independent configuration; instead it uses configuration settings from CPAN.pm and CPAN::Reporter.

Once started, it retrieves a list of distributions from the configured CPAN mirror and begins testing them in reverse order of upload. It will skip any distribution which has already had a report sent by CPAN::Reporter.

Features (or bugs, depending on your point of view):

  • No configuration needed

  • Tests each distribution as a separate CPAN process -- each distribution has prerequisites like build_requires satisfied from scratch

  • Continues until interrupted with CTRL-C

Current limitations:

  • Does not test developer/alpha versions of distributions

  • Doesn't check skip files before handing off to CPAN to test

  • Does not check for new distributions to test while running, only when starting up

  • Does not attempt to retest distributions that had reports discarded because of prerequisites that could not be satisfied

Warning

Smoke testing downloads and runs programs other people have uploaded to CPAN. These programs could do anything to your system, including deleting everything on it. Do not run CPAN::Reporter::Smoker unless you are prepared to take these risks.

HINTS

CPAN::Mini

Because distributions must be retrieved from a CPAN mirror, the smoker may cause heavy network load and will reptitively download common build prerequisites.

An alternative is to use CPAN::Mini to create a local CPAN mirror and to point CPAN's urllist to the local mirror.

$ cpan
cpan> o conf urllist unshift file:///path/to/minicpan
cpan> o conf commit

However, CPAN::Reporter::Smoker needs the 01modules.index.html file, which CPAN::Mini does not mirror by default. Add it to a .minicpanrc file in your home directory to include it in your local CPAN mirror.

also_mirror: modules/01modules.index.html

Note that CPAN::Mini does not mirror developer versions. When CPAN::Reporter::Smoker adds the ability to smoke test developer versions, a network CPAN Mirror will be needed in the urllist to retrieve these.

Skip files

CPAN::Reporter (1.07_01 or later) supports skipfiles to prevent copying authors on reports or from sending reports at all for certain distributions or authors' modules. Use these to stop sending reports if someone complains. See CPAN::Reporter::Config for more details.

A future version may utilize these to avoid testing modules in the skiplist instead of taking the time to test them and then just not send the report.

CPAN cache bloat

CPAN will use a lot of scratch space to download, build and test modules. Use CPAN's built-in cache management configuration to let it purge the cache periodically if you don't want to do this manually.

$ cpan
cpan> o conf init build_cache scan_cache
cpan> o conf commit

CPAN verbosity

Recent versions of CPAN are verbose by default, but include some lesser known configuration settings to minimize this for untarring distributions and for loading support modules. Setting the verbosity for these to 'none' will minimize some of the clutter to the screen as distributions are tested.

$ cpan
cpan> o conf init /verbosity/
cpan> o conf commit

USAGE

start()

Starts smoke testing using defaults already in CPAN::Config and CPAN::Reporter's .cpanreporter directory. Runs until the process is halted with CTRL-C or otherwise killed.

ENVIRONMENT

Automatically sets the following environment variables to true values while running:

  • AUTOMATED_TESTING -- signal that tests are being run by an automated smoke testing program (i.e. don't expect interactivity)

  • PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT -- accept ExtUtils::MakeMaker prompt() defaults

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature using the CPAN Request Tracker. Bugs can be submitted through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Queue=CPAN-Reporter-Smoker

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

SEE ALSO

AUTHOR

David A. Golden (DAGOLDEN)

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2008 by David A. Golden

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Files produced as output though the use of this software, shall not be considered Derivative Works, but shall be considered the original work of the Licensor.

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.