/ 
Dancer-1.9999_01
River stage three • 211 direct dependents • 215 total dependents
/ Dancer::Manual::Developers

NAME

Dancer::Manual::Developers - Steps to follow to hack on Dancer

VERSION

version 1.9999_01

This document is for developers. If you want to try out Dancer, hack it a bit, fix bugs, improve documentations, provide patches, etc. , you need to be able to build it and understand some basic stuff. This document tries to help in this regard.

Get Git

Go to http://git-scm.com, and get a git client for your platform

Get Dancer sources from GitHub

Go to https://github.com/PerlDancer/Dancer2. Then you can either grab a tarball, or clone read-only, or fork the project.

I recommend you to fork the project into your github account, so that you can go write modifications, and provide patches (Pull Requests) to upstream easily.

So go on and click on the Fork button. Then git clone your Dancer forked repo.

Prepare your environment (Perlbrew version)

You need Perl, and Dist::Zilla, and a few additional modules. This section describes how to get to a point where all the test passes and Dancer is usable, starting from nothing, using Perlbrew.

Get Perlbrew

Perlbrew allows you to have multiple version of Perl on your system, alongside your system built-in Perl. It's very handy, and doesn't require administration permissions.

Go to http://perlbrew.pl/ and follow the instructions to install the perlbrew program.

Install Perl

Now you need to pick up a version of Perl you'll install. Depending on what the current stable version is, the following line will have to be adapted. At the time of writing.

To see which version of perl is available, use:

# perlbrew available
perl-5.17.1
perl-5.16.0
perl-5.14.2
perl-5.12.4
perl-5.10.1
perl-5.8.9
perl-5.6.2
perl5.005_04
perl5.004_05
perl5.003_07

Then go on and install a version inside Perlbrew. I recommend you give a name to the installation (--as option), as well as compiling without the tests (--n option) to speed it up.

perlbrew install -n perl-5.14.2 --as dancer_development -j 3

Wait a while, and it should be done. Switch to your new Perl with:

perlbrew switch dancer_development

Now you are using the fresh Perl, you can check it with:

which perl

Install cpanm

To be able to easily and quickly install Perl modules, I recommend using cpanm

perlbrew install-cpanm

Install Dist::Zilla

Dancer uses Dist::Zilla ( http://dzil.org/ ). Dist::Zilla is a program to make it easier to write, package, manage, and release free software.

However, it's not built in Perl, so let's install it:

cpanm -n Dist::Zilla

That will take some time, but should install properly.

After that is done, you should be able to launch dzil:

# dzil
Available commands:

    commands: list the application's commands
        help: display a command's help screen

  authordeps: list your distribution's author dependencies
       build: build your dist
       clean: clean up after build, test, or install
     install: install your dist
    listdeps: print your distribution's prerequisites
         new: mint a new dist
         nop: do nothing: initialize dzil, then exit
     release: release your dist
         run: run stuff in a dir where your dist is built
       setup: set up a basic global config file
       smoke: smoke your dist
        test: test your dist

If that's the case, all's good.

Install dist.ini dependencies

The Dancer sources come with a dist.ini. That's the configuration files for Dist::Zilla, so that it knows how to build Dancer. However, in this configuration files, we use several Dist::Zilla plugins, that are not yet installed. Let's do that with:

dzil authordeps | cpanm -n

That should install a bunch of stuff

Install Dancer dependencies

Now that Dist::Zilla is up and running, you should install the dependencies required by Dancer:

dzil listdeps | cpanm -n

When that is done, you're good to go !

Test Dancer

Launching the Dancer test suite is easy:

dzil test

AUTHOR

Dancer Core Developers

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Alexis Sukrieh.

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