The answer to your first question is Yes. Maybe I should add "needed" after the version?

The three constructs shown in the Synopsis are the ones needed in the example code there. It's the programmer's responsibility to track them and list them. So yes, the human factor is the weakest part of the system.

Under 5.14, keys $ref already work without any switch. Specifying use Syntax::Construct qw{ auto-deref }; wouldn't change anything for you running on 5.14 (or higher), but it would give meaningful error messages to you or anyone else trying to run it on 5.12 and below. For keys $ref, the default message isn't so bad: 

Type of arg 1 to keys must be hash (not scalar dereference)

[download]

but for example for $x //= 1, I'm getting 

Search pattern not terminated

[download]

in 5.8.3.

It's in fact a triple-win situation:

  1. You win as the programmer, as you have all the constructs in one place (i.e. Syntax::Construct's documentation) and you don't waste your time searching through perldeltas and other places.
  2. Users of your modules win as they get meaningful error messages telling them to what Perl version they need to upgrade.
  3. The programmer they hired to workaround the problem wins as they know what constructs to replace in the code to make it run in the ancient version.
لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ

In reply to Re^4: Tests were run but no plan was declared and done_testing() was not seen. (Syntax::Construct) by choroba
in thread Tests were run but no plan was declared and done_testing() was not seen. by thanos1983

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