Re: Unintended consequences

[Adam Kennedy]

The questions that are being asked are for the user's benefit. That is 
NOT being a freeloader. Freeloading is taken something from the user and 
providing nothing in return.


If an installer asks a question in order to install the module or run 
the testing, it is acting for the user's benefit.


The reason phone home in general, and this type of question 
specifically, is freeloading is that it is not acting in a positive way 
for the user. The same would be true if I introduced Google text ads you 
had to watch during the module install. Even with a "Skip this text ad" 
option, it's still taking from the user.


But now she is at least doing it relative sanely (as opposed to earlier) 
and since she doesn't have any particularly popular modules, and as long 
as she's the ONLY one doing this sort of thing, it's still fairly innocent.


And so I haven't been chasing her about it.

I'm done venting now.

Adam K

Michael G Schwern wrote:

On 5/27/06, *Adam Kennedy* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:

I tell you what, I'm going to add the same code to all 100+ of my
modules. And what if then Audrey and Ovid and Miyagawa and a hundred
others did.

For an application with 50 dependencies, that's 50 x 20 second pauses,
or you get to sit there hitting no constantly.

She's acting as a freeloader on the system.


If she's a freeloader then Andy Lester is a freeloader.

By your logic you must complain about any module which asks the user any 
question because they cause the installation to pause and you have to 
take action.  Most of those don't even have the courtesy to time out!  
Let's apply your logic to WWW::Mechanize.  It asks not one but TWO 
questions!  What if every module on CPAN decided they wanted to prompt 
the user if they should run a certain group of tests?  Or install an 
extra program?  Think of the poor enter key!


Have we gone after Andy?  No, that would be silly.

Furthermore, she's properly using Module::Build->y_n() which, like 
ExtUtils::MakeMaker's prompt(), will just accept the default if it 
figures the system is not attached to a TTY.  And if you really don't 
want to hear about it you can switch off all interaction with 
PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=0 like any other module.  She has even provided an 
extra environment variable for her own modules.


I'm not saying the system couldn't be improved, it could, but her 
prompting is better than most other's.



But if more people started doing it, and they were modules in more use,
then it gets annoying very very quickly.

And that's quite a bit different to some centralised implementation
embedded in CPAN.pm that asks once and remembers.


If lots of people start doing it, yes, we should start looking at 
putting the process into the CPAN shell or Module::Build or something.  
But I do not think that its up to a single author to worry about the 
consequences of what happens if everyone starts doing their technique.  
If that were so, nobody would get any customization done.


If you wanted a way forward from this, a Module::Build::PhoneHome would 
be nice with its own environment variable, independent of 
PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT, to switch it off.  Then people can just use it and 
it will do the right thing, whatever that turns out to be.

Re: languages/ Cleanup

[Allison Randal]

Nicholas Clark wrote:


Would this be resolved by entries in the ChangeLog?
In Perl5 the version control history is added to a Changes file, which has
each commit message along with the perforce revision number. It makes it
very easy to search for these sorts of things. I assume that it's trivial
to automate the generation of such a file for subversion, if it's desired.


It's really not a big deal. 99.99% of the time when you 'svn delete' 
something, it's because you don't need it anymore. That's true here too. 
There's a good chance that if/when we get around to a PGE/TGE 
implementation of Forth, the old implementation won't even be useful. :)


Allison

Re: languages/ Cleanup

[Nicholas Clark]

On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 03:08:29PM -0700, Allison Randal wrote:
> Robert Spier wrote:
> >
> >Nothing is actually _deleted_ from SVN... it just gets harder to
> >find.  So it'll be there later if you want it.
> 
> Aye, I wasn't afraid it would disappear forever. But the old "What was 
> that deleted path I'm looking for, and what revision should I sync back 
> to?" makes it just hard enough to find stuff that it's preferable to 
> keep a copy elsewhere.

Would this be resolved by entries in the ChangeLog?
In Perl5 the version control history is added to a Changes file, which has
each commit message along with the perforce revision number. It makes it
very easy to search for these sorts of things. I assume that it's trivial
to automate the generation of such a file for subversion, if it's desired.

Nicholas Clark
-- 
I'm looking for a job: http://www.ccl4.org/~nick/CV.html

RE: $1,000 prize for Perl 6 Wiki written in Perl 6

[Conrad Schneiker]

Oops, I somehow overlooked including this intriguing item from an earlier
post:

> From: Ovid [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> On a related note, if anyone does want to build a P6 Wiki, you might
> consider building it on top of WWW::Kontent
> (http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Kontent/), a Perl6 CMS (Content
> Management System) that BrentDax wrote.

The only issue might be compatibility with whatever license Pugs is
currently using.

Best regards,
Conrad Schneiker
 
www.athenalab.com/Perl_6_Users_FAQ.htm

www.AthenaLab.com (Nano-electron-beam technology.)

Re: languages/ Cleanup

[Allison Randal]

Robert Spier wrote:


Nothing is actually _deleted_ from SVN... it just gets harder to
find.  So it'll be there later if you want it.


Aye, I wasn't afraid it would disappear forever. But the old "What was 
that deleted path I'm looking for, and what revision should I sync back 
to?" makes it just hard enough to find stuff that it's preferable to 
keep a copy elsewhere.


Allison

$1,000 prize for Perl 6 Wiki written in Perl 6

[Conrad Schneiker]

OK, I'm sold on a Perl 6 Wiki written in Perl 6-aka the (Perl 6)**2 Wiki.

 

However, I want it now!

 

So I'm offering to post a $1,000 prize (The AthenaLab "The 1st Extreme
Leverage Prize" for Perl 6), to be awarded to the person that delivers the
first (Perl 6)**2 Wiki that meets some moderate specifications. 

 

Here's what I currently have in mind.

 

The prize money would be held in escrow by The Perl Foundation (*IF* they
are willing to handle this). The Perl Foundation would decide when a prize
claimant had adequately realized the specifications. (Entries must be
announced on perl.perl6.users. To facilitate collaboration, the designated
winner may request that the prize be split up and distributed among up-to-10
cohorts or charities, with names and amounts to be publicly specified in
advance on perl.perl6.users.)

 

The specifications for the (Perl 6)**2 Wiki would be determined (and posted
to perl.perl6.users) by @Larry (*IF* they are willing to handle this). One
of the reasons for wanting @Larry to handle the specification for this prize
is my presumption that they best know what is presently (or soon will be)
"reasonable" to implement. Perl 6 means Pugs + Parrot for purposes of this
prize. (However, if @Larry recommends s/Parrot/Perl5/ for now, that's also
OK with me.) "Practically usable minimalism" and the
(http://www.perldesignpatterns.com/?TinyWiki) approach of starting with "the
simplest (working) thing possible" is fine. The aim is not to impress with
world with the first implementation, but rather to initiate a
self-sustaining chain reaction of improvement that will much later (a year
from now) impress the world with the cumulative rate of progress.

 

The license must be whatever the prevailing license was for the Pugs (Perl 6
core) svn source tree is at the time the prize is claimed. The source code
would be added to the examples or cookbook section of the Pugs source tree.
(Details to be determined by @Larry.)

 

The contestant (or contestants) are encouraged to seek help and feedback on
public forums. Just be up-front about it. Taking the initiative needed to
deliver the result is what is being rewarded, not doing it on your own. 

 

The (Perl 6)**2 Wiki must be installed and demonstrated on Feather, Juerd's
Perl 6 development server (*IF* this is OK with him, and if he can arrange
for www.perl6.nl   to go to the new Wiki, *UNLESS* the
Perl Foundation wants to host the main Wiki, in which case Feather would
still be used for further Wiki prototyping and development.).

 

We'll need a volunteer to serve as the (Perl 6)**2 Wiki sysadmin, once it
comes online. If no one else steps forward, I'd volunteer to serve as the
(Perl 6)**2 Wiki moderator for any (hopefully very rare) cases of content
issues. (I'd prefer that the Perl Foundation or Perl Mongers took
responsibility for these things, but I don't want to ask for too much at the
outset. To minimize disputes and churning, I suspect the
eventually-high-demand home page should be restricted to moderator-only
updating.)

 

Best regards,
Conrad Schneiker

 

www.athenalab.com/ 
Perl_6_Users_FAQ.htm


www.  AthenaLab.com (Nano-electron-beam
technology.)

 

Re: languages/ Cleanup

[Matt Diephouse]

Matt Diephouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

If no one has any objections, I'll remove these towards the end of the
week or during the weekend.


This is done as of r12807.

--
matt diephouse
http://matt.diephouse.com

Re: Unintended consequences

[Philippe "BooK" Bruhat]

Le samedi 27 mai 2006 à 11:50, Michael G Schwern écrivait:
> 
> If you wanted a way forward from this, a Module::Build::PhoneHome would be
> nice with its own environment variable, independent of PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT,
> to switch it off.  Then people can just use it and it will do the right
> thing, whatever that turns out to be.

But then, why phone home ? Just like CPAN testers information is
centralised in a mailing-list where everyone can use it and build up
stuff like http://cpantesters.perl.org/, that information could be
collected by a mailing-list.

Léon Brocard started something like that 3 years ago. What happened to it?
http://use.perl.org/~acme/journal/10623

-- 
 Philippe "BooK" Bruhat

 Fantasy is a nice vacation but Reality is where you spend your life.
(Moral from Groo The Wanderer #44 (Epic))

Re: Unintended consequences

[Michael G Schwern]

On 5/27/06, Adam Kennedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


I tell you what, I'm going to add the same code to all 100+ of my
modules. And what if then Audrey and Ovid and Miyagawa and a hundred
others did.

For an application with 50 dependencies, that's 50 x 20 second pauses,
or you get to sit there hitting no constantly.

She's acting as a freeloader on the system.



If she's a freeloader then Andy Lester is a freeloader.

By your logic you must complain about any module which asks the user any
question because they cause the installation to pause and you have to take
action.  Most of those don't even have the courtesy to time out!  Let's
apply your logic to WWW::Mechanize.  It asks not one but TWO questions!
What if every module on CPAN decided they wanted to prompt the user if they
should run a certain group of tests?  Or install an extra program?  Think of
the poor enter key!

Have we gone after Andy?  No, that would be silly.

Furthermore, she's properly using Module::Build->y_n() which, like
ExtUtils::MakeMaker's prompt(), will just accept the default if it figures
the system is not attached to a TTY.  And if you really don't want to hear
about it you can switch off all interaction with PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=0 like
any other module.  She has even provided an extra environment variable for
her own modules.

I'm not saying the system couldn't be improved, it could, but her prompting
is better than most other's.


But if more people started doing it, and they were modules in more use,

then it gets annoying very very quickly.

And that's quite a bit different to some centralised implementation
embedded in CPAN.pm that asks once and remembers.



If lots of people start doing it, yes, we should start looking at putting
the process into the CPAN shell or Module::Build or something.  But I do not
think that its up to a single author to worry about the consequences of what
happens if everyone starts doing their technique.  If that were so, nobody
would get any customization done.

If you wanted a way forward from this, a Module::Build::PhoneHome would be
nice with its own environment variable, independent of PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT,
to switch it off.  Then people can just use it and it will do the right
thing, whatever that turns out to be.

Re: Fw: Logic Programming for Perl6 (Was Re: 3 Good Reasons... (typo alert!))

[Ovid]

- Original Message 
> From: Brad Bowman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 >
> "let" variables and "hypothetical" assignments within rules may be a
> good starting point.

Hi Brad,

Caveat:  I'm also tremendously underqualified to to make serious proposals here.

Interesting idea.  As I understand hypothetical variables, they are similar in 
concept to variables in Prolog, but they still have the problem that they 
really are variables which can be assigned to.  Thus, if you have a "logical" 
iterator binding values to variables and someone else assigns a value, what 
then?  You can break everything in very mysterious ways.  That's why Luke 
Palmer (I think it was Luke) suggested a "twigil" for the variables:

  let $`x = 3;

That could be a logic variable which could only be assigned to hypothetically.  
Any initial assignment to a logical variable would effectively be declaring a 
constant.

> > There's also the question of non-logical behavior in logic
> > programming. What happens if you try to use math in Perl6 logic
> > programming? Generally speaking, math is "non-logical" in the sense
> > that it's used in Prolog (see the aforementioned article). Opening
> > and reading from a file is also non-logical (you can't backtrack over
> > it). How are those issues to be handled?
> 
> Closures may have an "undo" trait which should be written to revert
> the side-effects of the closure when it receives an UNDO control
> exception (the block fails, see Definition of Success above).

Hmm, the only real problem, as you noted, is having to explicitly code the UNDO 
behavior, but for non-logical behaviors, maybe that's not too bad?  Still, what 
would happen with deleting a file?  It's very likely that you can't easily UNDO 
that, so certain behaviors can't be backtracked over.  I wonder how Mercury and 
Haskell handle issue like this?  (I realize Haskell is functional and not 
logical, but I still don't know how their monads work or if they would be 
applicable :)

> There's some information about this in S05, with more info promised:

> http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/design/syn/S05.html#Matching_against_non-strings

Ooh, looks promising.  In that scenario, is a hash viewed as an array of pairs? 
 If so, we could potentially have logic programming matching just about any 
abitrary data structure.

Cheers,
Ovid
-- If this message is a response to a question on a mailing list, please send 
follow up questions to the list.
 
Web Programming with Perl -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/

Re: languages/ Cleanup

[Robert Spier]

> I was going to suggest keeping an archive of this one outside the
> repository, but it's only 2 files, so I'll just keep a copy for
> myself. (I'd like to revive it at some point in PGE/TGE and the old
> implementation could be useful.)

Nothing is actually _deleted_ from SVN... it just gets harder to
find.  So it'll be there later if you want it.

-R

Re: Introductions; P6 wiki

[Ovid]

On a related note, if anyone does want to build a P6 Wiki, you might consider 
building it on top of WWW::Kontent (http://search.cpan.org/dist/WWW-Kontent/), 
a Perl6 CMS (Content Management System) that BrentDax wrote. 

Cheers,
Ovid
 
-- If this message is a response to a question on a mailing list, please send 
follow up questions to the list.
 
Web Programming with Perl -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/

- Original Message 
From: Paul Fenwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: perl6-users@perl.org
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2006 4:46:23 AM
Subject: Introductions; P6 wiki

G'day Everyone,

I'm very glad to have finally subscribed to the P6 users list after a couple of
weeks of travel and intermittent network access, and so I apologise that this
message may not be properly threaded.  This is both a note of introduction and a
few words on the recent discussion about the P6 wiki ideas.

For those of you whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, I run Perl
Training Australia ( http://perltraining.com.au/ ), am the secretary of
Melbourne Perl Mongers, and speak whenever I get the chance at many of the
Australian conferences and user-groups.  I'm regularly asked about Perl 6, and I
often show it off to enthusiastic students during lunch breaks.  I'm also one of
the admins of PerlNet ( http://perl.net.au/ ), which brings us nicely to the
talk of P6 wikis.

I love the idea of the P6 wiki being written in P6, I think it's a fantastic
idea.  However I'm also aware that there are no P6 wiki implementations yet, and
it will probably take some time to get one running.  So can we have our cake and
eat it too?  I believe the answer is yes.

I can't see any problems with using an existing wiki, be it Feather, or PerlNet,
or any other wiki, with the intention to migrate the content to a P6-in-P6 wiki
when such becomes available.  The main thing to be careful of is ensuring that
people are aware of the migration plans, and that there are no license problems.
 The last thing we want are social or legal barriers to migrating content.

I do agree with Jured's sentiments that requiring the P6 wiki to support the
kitchen sink will make migration more difficult, and so that simplicity in
mark-up for any interim wiki is a good thing.

In the meantime, if anyone does want to use perl.net.au for any P6 (or Perl in
general), you should feel very encouraged to do so, even if it's with the
intention of migrating that content in the future.

Cheerio,

Paul

-- 
Paul Fenwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia| Fax: +61 3 9354 2681

Introductions; P6 wiki

[Paul Fenwick]

G'day Everyone,

I'm very glad to have finally subscribed to the P6 users list after a couple of
weeks of travel and intermittent network access, and so I apologise that this
message may not be properly threaded.  This is both a note of introduction and a
few words on the recent discussion about the P6 wiki ideas.

For those of you whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, I run Perl
Training Australia ( http://perltraining.com.au/ ), am the secretary of
Melbourne Perl Mongers, and speak whenever I get the chance at many of the
Australian conferences and user-groups.  I'm regularly asked about Perl 6, and I
often show it off to enthusiastic students during lunch breaks.  I'm also one of
the admins of PerlNet ( http://perl.net.au/ ), which brings us nicely to the
talk of P6 wikis.

I love the idea of the P6 wiki being written in P6, I think it's a fantastic
idea.  However I'm also aware that there are no P6 wiki implementations yet, and
it will probably take some time to get one running.  So can we have our cake and
eat it too?  I believe the answer is yes.

I can't see any problems with using an existing wiki, be it Feather, or PerlNet,
or any other wiki, with the intention to migrate the content to a P6-in-P6 wiki
when such becomes available.  The main thing to be careful of is ensuring that
people are aware of the migration plans, and that there are no license problems.
 The last thing we want are social or legal barriers to migrating content.

I do agree with Jured's sentiments that requiring the P6 wiki to support the
kitchen sink will make migration more difficult, and so that simplicity in
mark-up for any interim wiki is a good thing.

In the meantime, if anyone does want to use perl.net.au for any P6 (or Perl in
general), you should feel very encouraged to do so, even if it's with the
intention of migrating that content in the future.

Cheerio,

Paul

-- 
Paul Fenwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia| Fax: +61 3 9354 2681

Re: Unintended consequences

[Adam Kennedy]

demerphq wrote:

On 5/26/06, Ovid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

- Original Message 
> From: Adam Kennedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Andy Lester wrote:
> > Here's an example of why I'm not real excited about CPANTS:
> >
> > http://community.livejournal.com/perl/120747.html
>
> Ironically, posted by someone that also makes all her modules phone 
home

> at install time.


Huh? Can you post an example?  The logical spot for having the module 
"phone home" would be in the Makefile.PL.  I also glanced at some 
tests, but didn't see anything there, either.


Look at the Build.PL not the Makefile.PL.

And its voluntary so im not sure why Adam thinks its bad.


I tell you what, I'm going to add the same code to all 100+ of my 
modules. And what if then Audrey and Ovid and Miyagawa and a hundred 
others did.


For an application with 50 dependencies, that's 50 x 20 second pauses, 
or you get to sit there hitting no constantly.


She's acting as a freeloader on the system.

She's taking 20 seconds from every person, recursively, that installs 
any of her modules for no purpose other than her own.


And it's fairly innocent, as long as it is only her and they are modules 
almost nobody uses.


But if more people started doing it, and they were modules in more use, 
then it gets annoying very very quickly.


And that's quite a bit different to some centralised implementation 
embedded in CPAN.pm that asks once and remembers.


Adam K