Phalanx is a Perl QA project created to provide a solid testing base for Ponie, the next version of Perl 5 that will be based on the Parrot virtual machine. By increasing the test coverage of Perl modules and Perl itself, we will make Ponie the best-tested version of Perl ever. We also hope to involve members of the Perl community who might not have contributed to Perl before.

The first phase of Phalanx will update the tests in 100 of the most-widely used modules on CPAN. A Phalanx team member, or hoplite, will pick a distribution and, with the agreement and cooperation of the module's author, start working on the improvements. There may be one hoplite, or many, if the lead hoplite wants to bring others into her part of the project. Along the way, the hoplites will verify accuracy of the documentation, explore the depth and breadth of the module, and make sure that everything that can be tested is tested. Once changes are made, the lead hoplite will feed her patches back to the author, who will update his distribution. All changes are voluntary, and the author still retains full control of his module.

There are three goals for Phalanx. The first is to provide an excellent set of tests for the next version of Perl. Perhaps even more important, we want to encourage participation from members of the community who have never contributed back to Perl. It will be easy to get involved, and your involvement can be as much or as little as necessary. Prospective hoplites need not be part of perl5-porters or any perceived "Perl cabal", or even know about Perl internals. Finally, we're certain that we will uncover undiscovered bugs, and we'll identify them for the author, if not eliminate them.

We hope that module authors will welcome the contributions of the community, and that those who are interested in getting involved with Perl and open source can make a contribution, no matter how small. Even one .t file for a distribution, or updated documentation for a function, can be a big help.

After we've had some success in the first phase of Phalanx, we'll expand the process to Perl 5 itself and the core modules. This phase will be trickier, as we must work with the pumpkings and the rest of perl5-porters. We hope to have enough good lessons learned that it will be an easy transition.

Please visit the Phalanx website at http://qa.perl.org/phalanx/. If you'd like to help out, join the perl-qa mailing list, or email me at andy@petdance.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

In reply to Announcing the Phalanx project by petdance

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