I was happy to learn about this bizarre flag in Perl, even though it took a lot of aggravation to learn it.

Ages ago, I got a lot of requests for a way to let Dist::Zilla create new dists. Creating a useful command for doing that became part of the TPF grant work that I did, and dzil new started to work in May. By June, it reached the state it’s been in for months now, which seemed pretty good – but I didn’t really know, because I wasn’t using it.

When I first wrote about Test::Routine, I said it was a way of building a replacement for Test::Class that relied on Moose for all of its class composition. I compared it to replacing Exception::Class with Throwable, which let me get rid of a lot of features that were oriented toward building classes, and which were different from and inferior to those provided by Moose.

I’ve been trying to learn more about different patterns people use while writing test code, and to make sure that Test::Routine accomodates them all fairly easily. So far, I’m happy with it, but I’ve had a few changes I’ve made. So far, only one is intended to be user visible. From now on, instead of writing:

Test::Routine is a new system for building reusable hunks of tests that can be written quickly as one-offs, broken into modules for reuse, and that can use the large existing set of Test:: libraries from the CPAN. It implements as few features as possible and instead tries to let you use Moose’s extensive and commonly-used object system to get things done.

Fergal Daly wrote one of the most fantastically useful testing modules on the CPAN, Test::Deep. If you don’t use it, you really should. It’s very powerful and very easy to use. Fergal has decided that he can no longer promise enough time to Test::Deep maintenance, and I’m pleased to report that I have accepted responsibility.

First off, I will note that I’ve decided to make a little Amazon “aStore” for stuff I find myself recommending a lot. Be forewarned that I’m going to link to it when I link to stuff I endorse, and that if you buy from it, I get some cash. If you find this repellant, copy the ASIN and search for it at Amazon and buy there.

Last week, I was at OSCON. I have to write a lot more about that whole experience. For now, it’s only relevant because it mean that when my Popbox arrived, I wasn’t home. I checked some of the reviews and they were bad. Like, shockingly bad.

I just needed to create a Yahoo! account for someone who wanted to be able to access some of my photos. This required creating security questions and answers, and as usual the questions available to pick from were really awful. It just got stupider, though, when I tried to pick answers that I would be able to remember. (Many security questions are horrible because their answers change over time.)

I’m finally on the last leg of my trip home from YAPC. The travel home was slightly chaotic, and I worked a full day before actually getting onto the road home, but it’s been fine. The planes were fine, I was seated next to Walt (by chance!) and I didn’t suffer any extreme delays. That might change, as it looks like I’m going to be over an hour late getting home, but maybe that won’t come to pass. It would be nice to get to see Martha awake before tomorrow morning. Still, Gloria will be awake, and hopefully we can relax and maybe catch up on Top Chef a little.