Re: CPAN and XDG directories

(b) sounds like an interesting idea.

Adam K

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 2:03 AM, David Golden <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 9:12 AM, Lars Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ 迪拉斯 <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I of course ran `perl Makefile.PL ; make ; make testdistro ; make test` on the
>> source directory before committing and encountered no problems. Tests pass, my
>> configuration below `$HOME/.config` was not overwritten, and also no
>> `$HOME/.cpan` directory appeared again once I earlier had deleted it for good.
>> So, »works on my machine«.
>>
>> Are you referring to the tests of the CPAN distro or something else?
>
> Anything *else* on CPAN that does this:
>
> (a) uses File::HomeDir->my_data
>
> (b) Overrides $ENV{HOME} to a temp directory for testing creation of
> config files (instead of, say, mocking File::HomeDir->my_data)
>
> This presumes that they don't care or don't realize that $ENV{HOME}
> doesn't affect my_data on Windows.
>
> Adam's suggestion is only a so-so answer because users might
> legitimately have reasons to set HOME and XDG_DATA_HOME differently.
>
> The handful of modules I spot check seem to either just use my_home()
> directly instead of my_data() or if they use my_data(), they mock it
> or have some other override that avoids File::HomeDir entirely.
>
> Here's my revised suggestion:  add something to the File::HomeDir
> module (or distribution) that is the "official" way to mock/override
> File::HomeDir for testing and then advertise the hell out of it.  (And
> possibly email every author that uses File::HomeDir on CPAN)
>
> That could be any of these:
>
> (a) Some global variable that takes precedence over HOME, HOMEDIR,
> XDG_*, whatever
>
> (b) A File::HomeDir::Mock module that creates a temporary directory
> and points every other call to a subdirectory of it.  E.g.
>
>    /tmp/File-HomeDir-tmp498723487/
>        my_home/
>        my_data/
>        my_documents/
>        ...
>
> I think (b) is a safer bet.  Ideally, tests would just need to load it
> early, and then it would ensure that all subsequent use of
> File::HomeDir in that process is safely segregated from real user
> data.
>
> -- David
>
> P.S. Alias++ for the pun
>