Re: [mh] CPAN modules in MH

Lieven Hollevoet <[email protected]> Wed, 5 Jun 2019 08:48:50 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.misc.misterhouse.user
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Hello Brian,

thanks for taking action on this. I also agree with your idea.

The Travis CI tests are something I added, so I think I should be able to help you out.

The test routines are defined in the file code/test/test_mh.pl. They are called by executing all code that is in that folder.
You can see that in the config for the Travis tests here: https://github.com/hollie/misterhouse/blob/stable/.travis.yml <https://github.com/hollie/misterhouse/blob/stable/.travis.yml>

What I suspect is the issue is that the @INC path for the main MisterHouse perl file is adapted in your pull request. This does in effect ensure that all code in that file is using the system installed modules first before trying to fallback to the code-supplied ones.

However: when MisterHouse was written, it was decided implement some of the functionality in separate scripts. One of those functionalities is ‘get_url'. Those ‘external’ scripts don’t inherit the @INC path of the mh script according to me. They will also need to be adapted to ensure everything is working as expected.

I encountered the same issue when I had to update the shebang line of the scripts to use '/usr/bin/env perl' instead of ‘/usr/bin/perl’ to ensure that MisterHouse can use the user-defined perl and not the system-installed perl. I think the same goes for @INC.

Best regards,
 Lieven.



> Op 5 jun. 2019, om 08:02 heeft Brian M <[email protected]> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> No one seems to be object to moving those CPAN modules to a lower-priority directory (below the system directories), so I submitted that pull request.
> 
> I now see that the Travis CI test failed.  Apparently there are some test routines that also manually build @INC, and they need to be updated too..  Here's the relevant part of the log:
> 
> 06/05/19 05:21:29 AM Starting the test routines...
> Process start: cmd_path=./get_url cmd=./get_url -post 'testparameter=1' http://httpbin.org/post <http://httpbin.org/post> /tmp/get_url_post.txt
> Process start: parent pid=3916 type=external cmd=./get_url -post 'testparameter=1' http://httpbin.org/post <http://httpbin.org/post> /tmp/get_url_post.txt
> Process start: child type=external cmd=./get_url -post 'testparameter=1' http://httpbin.org/post <http://httpbin.org/post> /tmp/get_url_post.txt
> Can't locate LWP/UserAgent.pm in @INC (you may need to install the LWP::UserAgent module) (@INC contains: ./../lib ./../lib/site /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.18.2 /usr/local/share/perl/5.18.2 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.18 /usr/share/perl/5.18 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at ./get_url line 103.
> 
> LWP::UserAgent was moved to the new lib/fallback directory, but "lib/fallback isn't listed in @INC for the test routines.  I can't find where this test code is.  Does anyone have ideas where I should look for it?
> 
>            -Brian M.
> 
> On 5/30/19 8:15 PM, H Plato wrote:
>> That makes sense to me. I think modernizing some of those modules is a good idea with all the new functionality in v5+. I’d be willing to test out your idea on my setup.
>> 
>>> On May 30, 2019, at 7:51 PM, Brian M <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I have a change I'd like to submit to the MH development team, but it might have implications I'm not aware of or be controversial.  I thought I'd start a discussion here first, so I could get the input of the development team and others before simply submitting a pull request.
>>> 
>>> MisterHouse comes with some CPAN modules prepackaged into it.  The reasons for this have been discussed before, and I don't really want to reopen that topic here.  We can open a separate thread for that if we want to reconsider that decision.  Sufficient for now to say that there are CPAN modules embedded in the code tree, and that in some cases they're quite behind the current versions available via CPAN or what the O/S distros offer.
>>> 
>>> The problem is that as MisterHouse is currently structured, the system administrator or system owner is unable to cleanly updating the CPAN modules with newer versions, assuming the individual even knows they're there.  The modules live in the lib/site directory tree, and on start-up MisterHouse inserts that and other directories at the front of @INC, so that any system-supplied versions are ignored.  MisterHouse is saying in effect if not intent: "I know better than you do what versions you should run."  The individual can certainly go into the folder and replace the modules by hand, but at this point they're modifying the distributed code, creating a permanent maintenance hassle for themselves whenever they update MisterHouse.
>>> In my case, I spent many hours trying to figure out why my code to talk to my new thermostat would work outside of MisterHouse, but not inside it.  I eventually discovered that MH has a copy of LWP::UserAgent that is too old to support SSL connections.
>>> 
>>> My proposed solution is pretty simple:
>>> 
>>> We create a new directory under lib, as a peer to lib/site.  I'm open to suggestions for the names, but for now I'll call it lib/fallback.
>>> We move the MH-supplied versions of the CPAN modules into lib/fallback.
>>> We add one line of code to the mh main program that adds lib/fallback to the *end* of @INC.
>>> The result would be that if the system owner/administrator provided a version of a module elsewhere in the normal PERL search path, MH would use it.  If no such module exists, MH will use the version in fallback.  That way, MH would be assured to find a copy of the module, and if the local administrator wanted a newer version they could install one without changing MisterHouse's distributed code.
>>> 
>>> I've tried it on my own installation and it seems to be working well.  I'd be willing to code up the change and submit it, if the community doesn't have any objections.
>>> 
>>> I look forward to people's thoughts about this.
>>> 
>>>  -Brian M
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>>> 
>> 
> 
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