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Average customer rating:

One of my favorite Perl books
Great read for any Perl programmer
Solid, but not great, book
A great whirlwind tour of Perl modules and CPAN

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
Sam Tregar
Manufacturer: Apress
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 159059018X

Book Description

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN offers Perl developers a comprehensive guide to using and contributing to the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Starting with a general overview of CPAN's history, network topology, and navigational mechanisms, the book quickly brings you up to speed regarding how to search out and install available modules. However, in the true open source spirit, author and experienced Perl developer Sam Tregar teaches you how to not only use, but also contribute to CPAN via an in-depth discussion of module creation, submission, and maintenance.

Beginning with a survey of basic design principles, Tregar takes care to discuss all issues relevant to developers wishing to create great Perl modules, including choosing a proper name, properly using Perl's POD (plain old documentation) feature, concepts surrounding functional and object-oriented API development, and much more. Tregar then proceeds with a complete dissertation of how modules should conform to CPAN module specifications, covering required distribution files and coding considerations, in addition to offering advice regarding proper module testing. After demonstrating how to create a module and prepare it for release, Tregar guides you through the CPAN module submission process and discusses module maintenance once the module has been contributed to the CPAN service.

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN is an indispensable guide for anyone wishing to make the most of the CPAN service.

Download Description

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN offers Perl developers a comprehensive guide to using and contributing to the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Starting with a general overview of CPAN's history, network topology, and navigational mechanisms, the book then quickly brings readers up to speed regarding how to search out and install available modules. However, in the true Open Source spirit, author and experienced Perl developer Sam Tregar teaches readers how to not only use, but also contribute to CPAN via an in-depth discussion of module creation, submission, and maintenance.

Beginning with a survey of basic design principles, Tregar takes care to discuss all issues relevant to developers wishing to create great Perl modules, including choosing a proper name, properly using Perl's POD (plain old documentation) feature, concepts surrounding functional and object-oriented API development, and much more. Tregar then proceeds with a complete dissertation of how modules should conform to CPAN module specifications, covering required distribution files and coding considerations, in addition to offering advice regarding proper module testing. After demonstrating how to creat a module and prepare it for release, Tregar guides readers through the CPAN module submission process and discusses module maintenance once the module has been contributed to the CPAN service.

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN is an indispensable guide for anyone wishing to make the most of the CPAN service.

Customer Reviews:

One of my favorite Perl books.......2005-02-12

One thing that makes a great programming book for me is how enjoyable it is to read from start to finish, as a reference, or just fun reading, where I just flip open to any page and read whatever I find there. Sam Tregar's book fits all of the above. Some books make you say to yourself, 'it's important stuff I should know, but I'll take a look at it later' and they usually put you to sleep after a page or two. Not this one! I cannot wait to get back to reading it and re-reading and then downloading modules and their docs for more reading and then I can't wait to put it all to use. I was even driving with it in my hand this morning with my finger in the last chapter (CGI Application Modules for CPAN) hoping for some long red lights so I could read another paragraph or two. I highly recommend this book to all Perl programmers.

Great read for any Perl programmer.......2004-05-26

I found the style of this book very readable and friendly, covering the main idea behind the book (writing CPAN Modules), as well as being informative about Perl best practices and an insight into some great CPAN Modules.

Solid, but not great, book.......2003-02-12

I just finished reading Sam Tregar's book, and found a lot of things I liked about it. It's very readable, describes the stuff you need to know to write modules. I really liked his coverage of Inline and of CGI::Application, two facets of module writing that haven't gotten enough coverage.

A great whirlwind tour of Perl modules and CPAN.......2002-10-13

This charming book provides an extensive overview on pretty much everything you need to know to write a Perl module, prepare it for CPAN and submit it into the wild.

It's amazing how much this book covers: Not only does Sam Tregar show how object-oriented Perl modules are architected, how to write regression test suites, how to extend Perl modules with C code, but he gets also the community aspects right -- how does your module get really popular? You can tell that Sam is a successful Perl module author himself.

Now, on every single one of these topics one could have written another 300-page book, of course. But the charming aspect of the book is that, while it doesn't go into each and every detail, it provides an excellent overview to future module authors. The printing is quite anarchic, though, with low-budget drawings and some typos which could have been caught easily by a thorough proof-reader, but it's tolerable, it's like watching a low-budget film by a very talented young director.

If that's not enough, I found the last chapter of the book invaluable, covering the CGI::Application module, which enables authors to share popular CGI-flows (e.g. bulletin boards) on CPAN.

I can whole-heartedly recommend this book to every prospective CPAN author -- there's hardly any coverage of this topic anywhere in the Perl literature besides the somewhat scattered online documentation. Buy it today!

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