Modern Perl for the Unfrozen Paleolithic Perl Programmer
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Hello, unfrozen Paleolithic Perl programmers! Welcome to 2015! First, let’s start with the good news: yes, we’re still programming in Perl5 in 2015 (and yes, we think that’s good news). Indeed, most of the code you wrote in the past, before that unfortunate "Big Giant Hole in Ice" incident, will likely still work just fine on the current release of Perl5 -- even if you originally wrote it against Perl 4 or even Perl 3. Here’s the bad news: there’s been an incredible amount of innovation in not only Perl5-the-language, but also in Perl5-the-community and what the community considers to be accepted best practices and the right way to do things. It can be very frightening and confusing! But wait, there’s more good news: if you come to this talk, you’ll get a guided tour of my (reasonably opinionated) views on what the consensus best practices are around issues such as which version of Perl5 to use, system Perl versus non-system Perl, Perl5 installation management packages, new language features and libraries to use, old language features and libraries to avoid, modern tooling, and even more!
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Modern Perl for the Unfrozen Paleolithic Perl Programmer
- 1. Modern Perl for the Unfrozen Paleolithic Perl Programmer John SJ Anderson ⭐︎ Infinity Interactive ⭐︎ @genehack Pittsburgh Perl Workshop 2015 ⭐︎ 11 Oct 2015
- 2. I'M JUST A CAVEMAN DERN PERL FRIGHTENS AND CON
- 4. Quite a few things have changed...
- 6. You're just in time for the Perl6 release party
- 15. defined($this) ? $this : $that defined-or
- 18. sub add ($one, $two) { return $one + $two; }
- 19. new tools
- 20. "system" perl:
- 21. "system" perl: just say no
- 22. /usr/bin/perl
- 23. /usr/bin/perl
- 25. perlbrew.pl
- 28. advantages • Solves "vendor Perl lockin" issues • Install multiple Perls in your home directory • ... or elsewhere • Trivially switch from Perl version to Perl version • Able to install modules without special permissions • Easy to stay up to date with Perl development
- 29. plenv > perlbrew • Less magic messing around with PATH • Can "pin" Perl different ways: globally, per-shell, or per-directory
- 30. perlbrew > plenv • Kickass website
- 31. ing of installing in your $H
- 32. local::lib
- 33. local::lib • Install your own copies of modules • In your $HOME (so no special permissions needed) • Can also install per-project modules • Integrates well with other tools
- 34. speaking of installing stuff…
- 35. cpanminus cpanm
- 36. % cpan Git::Wrapper CPAN: Storable loaded ok (v2.54) Reading '/Users/genehack/.cpan/Metadata' Database was generated on Sat, 10 Oct 2015 01:17:02 GMT Running install for module 'Git::Wrapper' CPAN: LWP::UserAgent loaded ok (v6.13) Fetching with LWP: http://cpan.schatt.com/authors/id/G/GE/GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz CPAN: YAML loaded ok (v1.15) CPAN: Digest::SHA loaded ok (v5.95) Fetching with LWP: http://cpan.schatt.com/authors/id/G/GE/GENEHACK/CHECKSUMS CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok (v2.068) Checksum for /Users/genehack/.cpan/sources/authors/id/G/GE/GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper- 0.045.tar.gz ok tmp-47326 for tmp-47326: No such file or directory at /opt/plenv/versions/5.23.2/lib/perl5/5.23.2/CPAN/Distribution .pm line 468. CPAN: File::Temp loaded ok (v0.2304) CPAN: CPAN::Meta::Requirements loaded ok (v2.133) CPAN: Parse::CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v1.4417) CPAN: CPAN::Meta loaded ok (v2.150005) CPAN: Module::CoreList loaded ok (v5.20150820) Configuring G/GE/GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz with Makefile.PL Locating bin:git... found at /opt/git/bin/git. Checking if your kit is complete... Looks good Generating a Unix-style Makefile Writing Makefile for Git::Wrapper Writing MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json
- 37. GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz [17/1516] /opt/plenv/versions/5.23.2/bin/perl5.23.2 Makefile.PL -- OK Running make for G/GE/GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz cp lib/Git/Wrapper/File/RawModification.pm blib/lib/Git/Wrapper/File/RawModification.pm cp lib/Git/Wrapper.pm blib/lib/Git/Wrapper.pm cp lib/Git/Wrapper/Statuses.pm blib/lib/Git/Wrapper/Statuses.pm cp lib/Git/Wrapper/Exception.pm blib/lib/Git/Wrapper/Exception.pm cp lib/Git/Wrapper/Log.pm blib/lib/Git/Wrapper/Log.pm cp lib/Git/Wrapper/Status.pm blib/lib/Git/Wrapper/Status.pm Manifying 6 pod documents GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz /usr/bin/make -- OK Running make test PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 "/opt/plenv/versions/5.23.2/bin/perl5.23.2" "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "- MTest::Harness" "-e" "und ef *Test::Harness::Switches; test_harness(0, 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t t/00-load.t ............... 1/6 # Testing Git::Wrapper 0.045 t/00-load.t ............... ok t/author-err.t ............ skipped: these tests are for testing by the author t/basic.t ................. # Testing git version: 2.5.2 t/basic.t ................. ok t/git_binary.t ............ ok t/parse_args.t ............ ok t/path_class.t ............ # Testing git version: 2.5.2 t/path_class.t ............ ok t/release-pod-coverage.t .. skipped: these tests are for release candidate testing t/release-pod-syntax.t .... skipped: these tests are for release candidate testing All tests successful. Files=8, Tests=67, 1 wallclock secs ( 0.04 usr 0.02 sys + 0.39 cusr 0.31 csys = 0.76 CPU) Result: PASS GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz
- 38. (still not done but I got tired of pasting.)
- 39. % cpanm Git::Wrapper --> Working on Git::Wrapper Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/G/GE/GENEHACK/Git-Wrapper-0.045.tar.gz ... OK Configuring Git-Wrapper-0.045 ... OK Building and testing Git-Wrapper-0.045 ... OK Successfully installed Git-Wrapper-0.045
- 40. speaking of stuff on CPAN…
- 42. search.cpan.org
- 46. Duck Duck Go
- 47. Duck Duck Go
- 49. JSON::MaybeXS
- 51. CGI.pm is gone
- 52. (not really)
- 54. speaking of Perl websites…
- 62. g of staying up to date on Perl
- 67. questions?
Editor's Notes
- I was inspired to give this talk by a few online friends who happen to be Perl programmers -- but they're not engaged with the community, they're just using Perl to get a job done, and there's a widening gulf between what I think is reasonable -- so I wanted to put together sort of an info dump
- So, hi, unfrozen caveman Perl programmer! Welcome to 2015!
- Many things have changed since you fell into that glacier in 2001,
- Perl6 is still just about going to be released!
- Most of us are still happily coding in Perl5, however
- When you slipped into that big hole in the ice, perl 5.6 was the latest and greatest
- But we're all the way up to 5.22 now
- You probably don't remember Unicode -- it was around in 2001, but not terribly important or very well understood. It's way too complicated to get into here, just know that now we can get _really_ expressive in our Perl code
- So it's much easier to tell if we're happy...
- ... or when things aren't going quite as well.
- This should be a familiar way of communication for you!
- We got a great new feature in 5.10 called defined-or. You've probably written code much like this hundreds of times.
- Now, we can just write this! Which is pretty awesome. Defined-or was my favorite new perl feature of the 2000s
- Finally, we've also recently gotten support for subroutine signatures
- so we don't even have to unpack @_ ourselves! Who has started using subroutine signatures?
- It's not just language level features, we also have a host of new tools to make it easier to work with Perl
- These days, we make a distinction between the Perl that comes with your OS
- and encourage people not to use it for their development projects
- Yes, that means good old /usr/bin/perl...
- is no more. Instead, we use tools to install new Perls, outside the control of the OS
- The first tool that was developed for this purpose is called Perlbrew
- which you can get at perlbrew.pl
- there's also a newer option, plenv
- it's website isn't quite as snazzy as perlbrew's
- either one of these tools will give you numerous advantages over using the system perl
- personally, i'm using plenv these days -- the ability to easily specify a Perl version for a particular project is particularly useful to me
- We've got a new CPAN client these days
- this is the output from using the default 'cpan' client to install something.
- and this is more of the output...
- this is the output from cpanm installing the same thing
- we have a whole new website for interacting with CPAN
- search.cpan.org is still around...
- but metacpan integrates and visualizes a bunch of information in a really useful way
- things like a syntax-highlighted source view, linking to home pages and code repos, showing test results, and the amount of activity in a project
- it's also open source, so if you can think of a way to make it better, you can
- we also have a new search engine here in 2015. it's cool, and it's partially written in Perl
- The most useful feature, though, is ability to use 'bang searches' to restrict your search to a particular site - this is how you search metacpan
- if you haven't been playing close attention (and since you were frozen, you haven't been!) there are a few new modules you may have missed
- anybody doing web development these days needs to interact with JSON - using JSON::MaybeXS will make sure that you have a JSON library available, picking the best one from a number of alternatives
- To get a handle on how we do OOP in Perl these days, you should look into Moose -- and then when you're ready to write some code, you'll probably be able to get away with dropping down to Moo
- I do have some bad news for you -- CGI.pm has been pulled out of core
- don't worry, you can still find it on CPAN
- But the current standard for web development in Perl is Plack/PSGI. Offers a number of advantages over CGI, and is the basis for all modern Perl web frameworks
- we have quite a few new websites these days, which make it easier to keep up with the current state of things
- one of the problems with cpan is there's just _so_ _much_ _stuff_ there. it can be hard to decide which one of a dozen different modules to use. cpanratings helps with this problem
- you can see individual reviews, which version they're reviewing, and so on.
- MetaCPAN links to reviews as well as showing an average review score
- we also have CPANTS - automated testing of some best practices around module development
- here's what that looks like for a particular module. super useful if you're not sure you're doing things the "right" way
- MetaCPAN links to CPANTS too
- We also have PrePAN, which is a place to get feedback on module ideas you haven't even written yet
- we also have some sites that make it easier to keep up to date with what's going on in the perl world
- there's perl weekly, which is a once a week email newsletter aggregating perl related news from all over the web
- and in a recent development, sawyer has revived the p5p weekly email summary -- excellent if you want to keep up with what's going on with perl5 development but don't have time to follow the email list yourself
- Before I get wrap up and take questions, I want to thank Dan for accepting my talk -- I gave my first ever Perl talk at a PPW and it's always great to come back to Pittsburgh and see a bunch of familiar faces