Posts by schwern

Topic: GPL vs Artistic1 warning on Perl projects

I just noticed that DBI has the warning, "Artistic License may conflict with GPL" http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3583/factoids/353356

While this is true, it is irrelevant for Perl licensed projects (dual GPL/Aristic1) as you can choose either one. It's discussed here under "License of Perl 5 and below". http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Could you add an exception so the Artistic1 vs GPL incompatibility warning is not displayed if the other license is GPL? I'm worried the warning will be misinterpreted to mean the project is incompatible with the GPL.

Topic: Hi

Thanks for fixing that.

Topic: Open Source the Ohloh code

Open Source the Ohloh code.

I've been posting a lot of nits about how it handles Perl code statistics, I'd like to be able to fix them. It seems only fitting that the Open Source social site should itself be Open Source.

Topic: The Perl Code/Comments/Blanks commit ...

The Perl Code/Comments/Blanks commit statistics for MakeMaker appear to be off. For example, let's look at change 4188. "svn diff -r4187:4188 http://svn.schwern.org/svn/CPAN/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/trunk/".

As you can see lib/ExtUtils/MM_Darwin.pm adds in 13 lines of Perl, 4 lines of comments, 11 lines of POD and 17 blanks for a total of 45 additional lines.

(Ohloh's stats)[http://www.ohloh.net/projects/8110/contributors/3401/commits/16873458] say 27 lines of Perl, 1 comment and 17 blanks for a total of 45 lines. 27 seems to be close to what happens if you count POD as Perl, but that should add up to 24 lines. And why only 1 line of comments?

4187 is another example. "svn diff -r4186:4187 http://svn.schwern.org/svn/CPAN/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/trunk/".

They're all documentation changes, not code, which can only be told if the patch is seen in context. Assuming Ohloh is reading this as Perl I read 11 lines of Perl added with two new comments and 10 lines of Perl removed. That's 13 lines added and 10 lines removed.

(Ohloh's stats)[http://www.ohloh.net/projects/8110/contributors/3401/commits/16873457] say 13 lines of code and 3 comments added. 12 lines of code and 1 comment removed. That's 16 lines added and 13 removed.

Topic: My projects, and Perl projects in gen...

My projects, and Perl projects in general, are being dinged because of "Few source code comments". It reports MakeMaker as only having 5%. Ohloh fails to take into account POD, Plain Old Documentation. Documentation embedded in the source code which often takes the place of comments and has a much higher quality.

A simple evaluation of the MakeMaker sources (*.PL, *.t and *.pm) shows that it's...

• 11549 lines of code
• 1180 lines of comments
• 9187 lines of POD
• 3623 blank lines
• 25539 total lines.
• 554 subroutines
• 45.22% code.
• 40.59% POD and comments

Please count POD for the purpose of calculating source code comments. It's very easy to spot in Perl code:

/^=\w+/ # beginning of a POD block

/^=cut\s*$/ # end of a POD block

Topic: Hi

Hi. I noticed something odd just now. When looking at the list of licenses in My Stack there are separate entries for "Artistic License, GPL" as for "GPL, Artistic License". For example, Jifty::DBI vs ExtUtils::MakeMaker.

When projects have multiple licenses, such as most Perl projects ("same as Perl" means Artistic 1 + GPL 2), the ordering should not matter.

Thanks, Schwern

Topic: I would like to request that P

I would like to request that POD (Plain Old Documentation) be added as a language. This is the embedded documentation language used by Perl. More information can be found here: http://perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?pod

About 40% of the average Perl module on CPAN is POD. While it is technically not a programming language, it represents a significant amount of work on the part of the programmers and should somehow be measured. POD represents much more than just a mere comment. In terms of effort expended, a few good lines of POD is worth as much if not more than a few good lines of code.

If Ohloh were to start tracking documentation POD would be a great first candidate.

Thank you, Schwern