bmt (brian's module tool)

This is my tool for managing my Perl modules. It's specifically designed for the way that I like to do things.

• Makefile.PL as a modulino
• I store repos in GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab at the same time (Use several Git Services at Once)

Things are likely broken because I'm not supporting this for other people to use, so I tend to take less care than I would otherwise. And, this uses a Perl module that is on GitHub but that I haven't released to CPAN, so good luck with that:

use lib qw(/Users/brian/Dev/ghojo/lib);

But, you can use this as a starting point for your own customized tool. Steal anything you like.

About the tool

There are all sorts of tasks I do inside a Perl module repository. Many of these tasks are informational, such as "tell me if the local version of this module is higher than the version on CPAN":

% bmt versions

This task then knows how to talk to MetaCPAN and how to discover the local version.

Other tasks make changes. For example, I have a set of general GitHub workflows that I use across all of my modules. To update those from their repository () to the current repo:

% bmt update_workflows

Then various magic happens, including modifying the general workflows for local requirements, such as randomizing the cron triggers.

Most times I notice myself doing something often, I turn it into a command in this tool. This script grows by accretion.

Not only that, but if I decide that I want some existing target to do soemthing differently, I just change it. Indeed, one of the targets brings up the script in my editor:

% bmt edit

Some interesting ideas to steal

Do it the same way everywhere.

I standardized the GitHub issues labels for all of my repos. And, using the GitHub API, I can easily handle that:

% bmt update_github_labels

If I add or change labels, I just run this again. Easy peasy.

Registering commands

I have all of these commands, and I want to run the help command to see what it can do:

% bmt help
actions                   open the actions Github page
adjust_appveyor           adjust AppVeyor config for min Perl versions
adjust_linux_workflow     adjust linux workflow perl versions
all_remote                configure the all remote
appveyor                  open the Appveyor page
appveyor_page             open the Appveyor page
...

Instead of tracking this out of band, things get into this list because the subroutine adds itself to the list at compile time through an attribute:

sub cpan_testers :Register("show Testers result for the latest version") ( $release = undef ) {

Makefile.PL exposes its arguments

Read more about this in Makefile.PL as a modulino. Makefile.PL is basically a Perl module's build file, and various steps need some of the information from that file:

$ bmt arguments
{
  "ABSTRACT_FROM" => "lib/App/bmt.pm",
  "AUTHOR" => "brian d foy <briandfoy\@pobox.com>",
  "BUILD_REQUIRES" => {},
  "CONFIGURE_REQUIRES" => {
	"ExtUtils::MakeMaker" => "6.64",
	"File::Spec::Functions" => 0
  },
...
}

Getting at these settings makes automation much easier.

Compose commands

There are sets of lower-level commands that I want to run. I just compose them into a single command:

sub update_all :Register("update many things at once") () {
	state @actions = qw(
		update_releaserc
		update_release_token
		update_appveyor
		update_workflows
		update_github_labels
		create_cb
		all_remote
		update_copyright
		);

	_combine_actions( @actions );

	'Updated everything';
	}