NAME CPAN::Reporter::Smoker - Turnkey CPAN Testers smoking VERSION This documentation describes version 0.03. SYNOPSIS $ perl -MCPAN::Reporter::Smoker -e start DESCRIPTION Rudimentary smoke tester for CPAN Testers, built upon CPAN::Reporter. Use at your own risk. It requires CPAN::Reporter 1.08 or higher. Currently, CPAN::Reporter::Smoker requires zero independent configuration; instead it uses configuration settings from CPAN.pm and CPAN::Reporter. Once started, it retrieves a list of distributions from the configured CPAN mirror and begins testing them in reverse order of upload. It will skip any distribution which has already had a report sent by CPAN::Reporter. Features (or bugs, depending on your point of view): * No configuration needed * Tests each distribution as a separate CPAN process -- each distribution has prerequisites like build_requires satisfied from scratch * Continues until finished or until interrupted with CTRL-C Current limitations: * Doesn't check skip files before handing off to CPAN to test * Does not check for new distributions to test while running, only when starting up * Does not attempt to retest distributions that had reports discarded because of prerequisites that could not be satisfied Warning Smoke testing downloads and runs programs other people have uploaded to CPAN. These programs could do anything to your system, including deleting everything on it. Do not run CPAN::Reporter::Smoker unless you are prepared to take these risks. HINTS Selection of distributions to test Only the most recently uploaded developer and normal releases will be tested, and only if the developer release is newer than the regular release indexed by PAUSE. For example, if Foo-Bar-0.01, Foo-Bar-0.02, Foo-Bar-0.03_01 and Foo-Bar-0.03_02 are on CPAN, only Foo-Bar-0.02 and Foo-Bar-0.03_02 will be tested, and in reverse order of when they were uploaded. Once Foo-Bar-0.04 is released and indexed, Foo-Bar-0.03_02 will not longer be tested. To avoid testing script or other tarballs, developer distributions included must have a base distribution name that resembles a distribution tarball already indexed by PAUSE. If the first upload of distribution to PAUSE is a developer release -- Baz-Bam-0.00_01.tar.gz -- it will not be tested as there is no indexed Baz-Bam appearing in CPAN's 02packages.details.txt file. Unauthorized tarballs are treated like developer releases and will be tested if they resemble an indexed distribution and are newer than the indexed tarball. Perl, parrot, kurila, Pugs and similar distributions will not be tested. The skip list is based on CPAN::Mini and matches as follows: qr{(?: /(?:emb|syb|bio)?perl-\d | /(?:parrot|ponie|kurila|Perl6-Pugs)-\d | /perl-?5\.004 | /perl_mlb\.zip )}xi, CPAN::Mini Because distributions must be retrieved from a CPAN mirror, the smoker may cause heavy network load and will reptitively download common build prerequisites. An alternative is to use CPAN::Mini to create a local CPAN mirror and to point CPAN's "urllist" to the local mirror. $ cpan cpan> o conf urllist unshift file:///path/to/minicpan cpan> o conf commit However, CPAN::Reporter::Smoker needs the "find-ls.gz" file, which CPAN::Mini does not mirror by default. Add it to a .minicpanrc file in your home directory to include it in your local CPAN mirror. also_mirror: indices/find-ls.gz Note that CPAN::Mini does not mirror developer versions. Therefore, a live, network CPAN Mirror will be needed in the urllist to retrieve these. Skip files CPAN::Reporter (since 1.07_01) supports skipfiles to prevent copying authors on reports or from sending reports at all for certain distributions or authors' modules. Use these to stop sending reports if someone complains. See CPAN::Reporter::Config for more details. A future version may utilize these to avoid testing modules in the skiplist instead of taking the time to test them and then just not send the report. CPAN cache bloat CPAN will use a lot of scratch space to download, build and test modules. Use CPAN's built-in cache management configuration to let it purge the cache periodically if you don't want to do this manually. $ cpan cpan> o conf init build_cache scan_cache cpan> o conf commit CPAN verbosity Recent versions of CPAN are verbose by default, but include some lesser known configuration settings to minimize this for untarring distributions and for loading support modules. Setting the verbosity for these to 'none' will minimize some of the clutter to the screen as distributions are tested. $ cpan cpan> o conf init /verbosity/ cpan> o conf commit USAGE "start()" Starts smoke testing using defaults already in CPAN::Config and CPAN::Reporter's .cpanreporter directory. Runs until all distributions are tested or the process is halted with CTRL-C or otherwise killed. ENVIRONMENT Automatically sets the following environment variables to true values while running: * "AUTOMATED_TESTING" -- signal that tests are being run by an automated smoke testing program (i.e. don't expect interactivity) * "PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT" -- accept ExtUtils::MakeMaker prompt() defaults BUGS Please report any bugs or feature using the CPAN Request Tracker. Bugs can be submitted through the web interface at When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature. SEE ALSO * CPAN * CPAN::Reporter * CPAN::Testers AUTHOR David A. Golden (DAGOLDEN) COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE Copyright (c) 2008 by David A. Golden Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at Files produced as output though the use of this software, shall not be considered Derivative Works, but shall be considered the original work of the Licensor. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.