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timbunce / devel-nytprof

Devel::NYTProf is a powerful feature-rich source code profiler for Perl. (Mostly in maintenance mode, so PRs are much more likely to be acted upon than Issues.)
http://blog.timbunce.org/tag/nytprof/
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Devel::NYTProf::Apache: discourage or spin off to new distribution #182

Closed jkeenan closed 3 years ago

jkeenan commented 3 years ago

Module Devel::NYTProf::Apache has been part of the Devel-NYTProf distribution since 2008. However, we should seriously consider either (a) spinning it off into a CPAN distribution of its own; or (b) retaining it in the current distribution but marking its use as officially discouraged.

Why?

Because currently it is unmaintained and likely to remain so indefinitely. The last changes other than housekeeping (e.g., incrementing $VERSION; getting rid of svn ID tags; etc.) or documentation touch-ups were done more than a decade ago.

commit 12d0c547c6100199252bc5f5e1e8a80230e3a042
Author:     Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@pobox.com>
AuthorDate: Wed May 26 17:35:13 2010 +0000

This module is never exercised in the test suite.

[perlmonger: devel-nytprof] $ ack -i apache t
[perlmonger: devel-nytprof] $

Hence, the current maintainers have no way of knowing whether it works or not. When Adam Kaplan, Tim Bunce and our other distinguished contributors were working on this module back in the day, they were probably working in environments where Apache and mod_perl were widely used in production so. That would have enabled them to assess the module's correctness and performance in vivo.

I do not know how much Apache and mod_perl are used in production these days, but I do know that other web services have become at least as important. So there's no reason to afford Apache/mod_perl a privileged place inside the Devel-NYTProf distribution.

I can see two possible paths forward:

  1. If (a) you are an experienced user of Devel-NYTProf, (b) can set up a development/testing environment with Apache/mod_perl, (c) can devise some tests that would demonstrate that Devel::NYTProf::Apache works as intended and (d) would be willing to support it as an independent CPAN distribution, then please let us know! We'll discuss mechanics off-line. Or ...

  2. We should officially discourage Devel::NYTProf::Apache in its documentation on the basis that while its code may be sound, we have no way of demonstrating or testing that. In that documentation we could continue to hold out option 1 as a possibility.

To get the ball rolling, I have submitted pull request https://github.com/timbunce/devel-nytprof/pull/181 that implements option 2.

Thank you very much. Jim Keenan

jkeenan commented 3 years ago

@timbunce approved this pull request yesterday, do the Apache module is now discouraged but still open for spinoff. Maintainers welcome!

Closing this ticket.

Thank you very much. Jim Keenan