the 2012Q3 call for grants: some ideas
It’s that time again! The Perl Foundation has issued the Q3 2012 call for grant proposals, and you’ve got a few weeks to apply for one. Here are some things I’d like to see people do. Obviously, when you apply for a grant, you need to convince the grants committee that you’ve got a great chance of getting the work done, and done on time. “On time” probably means “pretty quickly” for these tasks.
These are pretty small, and I think that’s good. Small tasks are more likely to be doable, and even a small grant amount might be a nice bounty for them, as opposed to the lousier ratio one tends to get when doing a whole lot of work for a higher end (around $2000) grant.
These are the first few tasks that popped into my head. I’d love to see what other people think needs doing.
readpipe(LIST)
From the Perl todo:
system() accepts a LIST syntax (and a PROGRAM LIST syntax) to avoid running a shell. readpipe() (the function behind qx//) could be similarly extended.
unused lexicals
From the Perl todo:
This warns:
$ perl -we '$pie = 42' Name "main::pie" used only once: possible typo at -e line 1.This does not:
$ perl -we 'my $pie = 42'Logically all lexicals used only once should warn, if the user asks for warnings. An unworked RT ticket (#5087) has been open for eleven years for this discrepancy.
There’s an RT ticket for this one. Probably the warning should be suppressed if you assign to the variable, as above, because you may be doing so in order to get an effect when the object is destroyed. “my $x;” alone, though, is pointless… right??
make App::Nopaste’s Gist plugin with with GitHub’s v3 API
When I wrote App::Nopaste::Service::Gist, it was very easy to post a gist under my own username. Now it seems to be a nightmare of OAuth. I’d sure love if this worked again, though. I bet somebody out there knows OAuth.
update PPI for more recent constructs
Last I looked, PPI couldn’t handle much newer than Perl v5.10 or v5.12. I don’t have a comprehensive list of the stuff it can’t do, but it wouldn’t be tiny. Make it all work.