HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

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

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 (Makefile.PL, META.json, and cpanfile).

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

Code style and tidying

This distribution contains a .perltidyrc file in the root of the repository. Please install Perl::Tidy and use perltidy before submitting patches. However, as this is an old distribution and styling has changed somewhat over the years, please keep your tidying constrained to the portion of code or function in which you're patching.

$ perltidy -pro=perltidyrc lib/HTTP/Status.pm -o my_tidy_copy.pm
...
$ rm my_tidy_copy.pm

The above command, for example, would provide you with a copy of Status.pm that has been cleaned according to our .perltidyrc settings. You'd then look at the newly created my_tidy_copy.pm in the dist root and replace your work with the cleaned up copy if there are differences.

This may seem like an arbitrary thing, but it is immensely helpful if all code is written in a singular style. If everything were tidy, it'd look like one single person wrote the code rather than a mish-mash.

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 Makefile.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 CC0, with inspiration from the contributing documents from Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Author::KENTNL::CONTRIBUTING and Dist::Zilla::PluginBundle::Author::ETHER.