Bug#796040: pkg-perl-tools: Please have syntax.t check syntax of Perl programs installed in the $PATH

[Niko Tyni]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 09:11:34PM +0200, intrigeri at debian.org wrote:
> Package: pkg-perl-tools
> Version: 0.24
> Severity: wishlist
> X-Debbugs-Cc: nodens at nodens.org
 
> the openpgp-applet package (soon to be uploaded to Debian, already in
> the team's Git) ships mostly one program. It would be good to check
> its syntax. Currently, syntax.t only checks modules.

Hi, thanks for the idea and sorry for the lack of action on this.

A few points:

- traversing PATH seems a bit overkill, maybe just /usr/bin would do?

- It feels a bit risky to me to blindly run 'perl -c' on every program
  in a package. I'm slightly worried that there will be side effects,
  even with just BEGIN blocks. This is in contrast to modules, which
  I'd expect not to have side effects on just loading them.

- would it be enough to implement just a package-specific configuration
  file (say debian/tests/syntax-files) where you could list files to
  check? The manual configuration would address my concerns above.
 
I think I'll implement the latter for now and close this with it,
hope that's OK by you. Please reopen if you'd still prefer the more
automatic checking.
-- 
Niko