NAME¶
criticism - Perl pragma to enforce coding standards and best-practices
SYNOPSIS¶
use criticism;
use criticism 'gentle';
use criticism 'stern';
use criticism 'harsh';
use criticism 'cruel';
use criticism 'brutal';
use criticism ( -profile => '/foo/bar/perlcriticrc' );
use criticism ( -severity => 3, -verbose => '%m at %f line %l' );
DESCRIPTION¶
This pragma enforces coding standards and promotes best-practices by running
your file through Perl::Critic before every execution. In a production system,
this usually isn't feasible because it adds a lot of overhead at start-up. If
you have a separate development environment, you can effectively bypass the
"criticism" pragma by not installing Perl::Critic in the production
environment. If Perl::Critic can't be loaded, then "criticism" just
fails silently.
Alternatively, the "perlcritic" command-line (which is distributed
with Perl::Critic) can be used to analyze your files on-demand and has some
additional configuration features. And Test::Perl::Critic provides a nice
interface for analyzing files during the build process.
If you'd like to try Perl::Critic without installing anything, there is a
web-service available at <
http://perlcritic.com>. The web-service does
not yet support all the configuration features that are available in the
native Perl::Critic API, but it should give you a good idea of what it does.
You can also invoke the perlcritic web-service from the command line by doing
an HTTP-post, such as one of these:
$> POST http://perlcritic.com/perl/critic.pl < MyModule.pm
$> lwp-request -m POST http://perlcritic.com/perl/critic.pl < MyModule.pm
$> wget -q -O - --post-file=MyModule.pm http://perlcritic.com/perl/critic.pl
Please note that the perlcritic web-service is still alpha code. The URL and
interface to the service are subject to change.
CONFIGURATION¶
If there is
exactly one import argument, then it is taken to be a named
equivalent to one of the numeric severity levels supported by Perl::Critic.
For example, "use criticism 'gentle';" is equivalent to setting the
"-severity => 5", which reports only the most dangerous
violations. On the other hand, "use criticism 'brutal';" is like
setting the "-severity => 1", which reports
every
violation. If there are no import arguments, then it defaults to 'gentle'.
If there is more than one import argument, then they will all be passed directly
into the Perl::Critic constructor. So you can use whatever arguments are
supported by Perl::Critic.
The "criticism" pragma will also obey whatever configurations you have
set in your
.perlcriticrc file. In particular, setting the
"criticism-fatal" option to a true value will cause your program to
immediately "die" if any Perl::Critic violations are found.
Otherwise, violations are merely advisory. This option can be set in the
global section at the top of your
.perlcriticrc file, like this:
# Top of your .perlcriticrc file...
criticism-fatal = 1
# per-policy configurations follow...
You can also pass "('-criticism-fatal' => 1)" as import arguments,
just like any other Perl::Critic argument. See "CONFIGURATION" in
Perl::Critic for details on the other configuration options.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
Usually, the "criticism" pragma fails silently if it cannot load
Perl::Critic. So by
not installing Perl::Critic in your production
environment, you can leave the "criticism" pragma in your production
source code and it will still compile, but it won't be analyzed by
Perl::Critic each time it runs.
However, if you set the "DEBUG" environment variable to a true value
or run your program under the Perl debugger, you will get a warning when
"criticism" fails to load Perl::Critic.
NOTES¶
The "criticism" pragma applies to the entire file, so it is not
affected by scope or package boundaries and "use"-ing it multiple
times will just cause it to repeatedly process the same file. There isn't a
reciprocal "no criticism" pragma. However, Perl::Critic does support
a pseudo-pragma that directs it to overlook certain lines or blocks of code.
See "BENDING THE RULES" in Perl::Critic for more details.
AUTHOR¶
Jeffrey Ryan Thalhammer <thaljef@cpan.org>
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (c) 2006-2007 Jeffrey Ryan Thalhammer. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of this license can be found in
the LICENSE file included with this module.