Re: Request for Comments on Perl::Critic

[Perl Mouse]

I looked at the first subroutine of Perl::Critic (sub new), and I noticed that it violates several of PBP's recommendations. For instance, while the API of sub new uses named arguments, it doesn't say all of them need to be passed in a hash ref. It also uses hash based objects, instead of using Class::Std. I also note regexes without a /s modifier, and even at least one without any modifier.

I started installing Perl::Critic, but it has an army of dependencies - when it way up in the dependence tree had dependencies on ExtUtils::AutoInstall and CPANPLUS, I aborted the process.

[friedo]

PBP is a great book and while I have nothing but immense respect for TheDamian, I think he goes a little off the deep end in parts of it. When reading it, I found that about 80% of it consisted of things I already do, 15% consisted of things that might be a good idea, and 5% consisted of things that made me say, "What the hell is this nutcase thinking?!"

But that's OK. Nobody agrees on coding standards, and in Perl especially, because there's a million ways to do everything. I like to think my code is clean, abstract, modular and well-organized, but I'm sure Damian would be horrified by some of my decisions. ("Oh no! friedo uses unless all over the place! He must be a drooling mental patient!) You get the idea.

That said, I don't think PBP is a good baseline to use for a code critic. A lot of the reccomendations are somewhat superficial, whereas a code critic should look primarily at dangerous constructs. (Non-use of strict, indirect method invocation, accidental autovivification, symrefs, overly complicated conditionals, etc.)

[tirwhan]

Ooh, interesting! Does not following PBP constitute a failing that should be flagged in and of itself? (I'm not being facetious here, I'm genuinely interested in what people think about this.) If so, to what degree? While I think PBP is a fantastic book, there are (to my mind) certain recommendations in it which can/should be ignored more readily than others and regarding the whole book as a "must-follow" sort of bible would pose more restrictions on module authors than I personally think sensible.

[jthalhammer]

The Perl::Critic distribution is fully self-compliant. If you have Test::Perl::Critic installed, then it automatically critiques itself during the build.
But I'm just like everyone else who has read PBP: there are some practices that I'm still working to adopt and there are some that I completely reject. Does this make Perl::Critic a heretic? I don't think so.
Regardless of how it is actually written, the idea behind Perl::Critic is to help developers follow clear and consistent coding practices. It doesn't actually matter what those practices are. I just chose to start with PBP becuase they are well known and come from a reputable source. Any developer is free to create Perl::Critic::Policy modules that enforce their style and practices.
-Jeff