HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

Thank you for considering contributing to this distribution. This file contains instructions that will help you work with the source code.

PLEASE NOTE that if you have any questions or difficulties, you can reach the maintainer(s) through the bug queue described later in this document (preferred), or by emailing the releaser directly. You are not required to follow any of the steps in this document to submit a patch or bug report; these are just recommendations, intended to help you (and help us help you faster).

The distribution is managed with Dist::Zilla. This means that many of the usual files you might expect are not in the repository, but are generated at release time. Some generated files are kept in the repository as a convenience (e.g. Build.PL/Makefile.PL and META.json).

Generally, you do not need Dist::Zilla to contribute patches. You may need Dist::Zilla to create a tarball. See below for guidance.

Getting dependencies

If you have App::cpanminus 1.6 or later installed, you can use cpanm to satisfy dependencies like this:

$ cpanm --installdeps --with-develop .

You can also run this command (or any other cpanm command) without installing App::cpanminus first, using the fatpacked cpanm script via curl or wget:

$ curl -L https://cpanmin.us | perl - --installdeps --with-develop .
$ wget -qO - https://cpanmin.us | perl - --installdeps --with-develop .

Otherwise, look for either a cpanfile or META.json file for a list of dependencies to satisfy.

Running tests

You can run tests directly using the prove tool:

$ prove -l
$ prove -lv t/some_test_file.t

In most cases, prove is entirely sufficient for you to test any patches you have. I use prove for 99% of my testing during development.

Code style and tidying

Please try to match any existing coding style. If there is a .perltidyrc file, please install Perl::Tidy and use perltidy before submitting patches.

Submitting patches

The code for this distribution is hosted at GitHub. The repository is: https://github.com/libwww-perl/libwww-perl You can submit code changes by forking the repository, pushing your code changes to your clone, and then submitting a pull request. Detailed instructions for doing that is available here:

https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request

All pull requests for this distribution will be automatically tested on Linux by Travis at: https://travis-ci.com/libwww-perl/libwww-perl Results will be visible in the pull request on GitHub. Follow the appropriate links for details when tests fail.

If you have found a bug, but do not have an accompanying patch to fix it, you can submit an issue report here: https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=libwww-perl or via email: bug-libwww-perl@rt.cpan.org

There is also a mailing list available for users of this distribution, at libwww@perl.org There is also an irc channel available for users of this distribution, at irc://irc.perl.org/#lwp

Installing and using Dist::Zilla

Dist::Zilla is a very powerful authoring tool, optimized for maintaining a large number of distributions with a high degree of automation, but it has a large dependency chain, a bit of a learning curve and requires a number of author-specific plugins.

To install it from CPAN, I recommend one of the following approaches for the quickest installation:

# using CPAN.pm, but bypassing non-functional pod tests
$ cpan TAP::Harness::Restricted
$ PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 HARNESS_CLASS=TAP::Harness::Restricted cpan Dist::Zilla

# using cpanm, bypassing *all* tests
$ cpanm -n Dist::Zilla

In either case, it's probably going to take about 10 minutes. Go for a walk, go get a cup of your favorite beverage, take a bathroom break, or whatever. When you get back, Dist::Zilla should be ready for you.

Then you need to install any plugins specific to this distribution:

$ dzil authordeps --missing | cpanm

You can use Dist::Zilla to install the distribution's dependencies if you haven't already installed them with cpanm:

$ dzil listdeps --missing --develop | cpanm

Once everything is installed, here are some dzil commands you might try:

$ dzil build
$ dzil test
$ dzil regenerate

You can learn more about Dist::Zilla at http://dzil.org/

Other notes

This distribution maintains the generated META.json and either Makefile.PL or Build.PL in the repository. This allows two things: Travis CI can build and test the distribution without requiring Dist::Zilla, and the distribution can be installed directly from Github or a local git repository using cpanm for testing (again, not requiring Dist::Zilla).

$ cpanm git://github.com/Author/Distribution-Name.git
$ cd Distribution-Name; cpanm .

Contributions are preferred in the form of a Github pull request. See Using pull requests for further information. You can use the Github issue tracker to report issues without an accompanying patch.

CREDITS

This file was adapted from an initial CONTRIBUTING.mkdn file from David Golden under the terms of the Apache 2 license, with inspiration from the contributing documents from Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Author::KENTNL::CONTRIBUTING and Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author::ETHER.