Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Plack::App::* namespace is not for apps - so which is the proper CPAN namespace ?

OOps ... I just realized that I had misunderstood the intent of the Plack::App namespace : the top-level Plack doc explicitly says :
DO NOT USE Plack:: namespace to build a new web application or a framework. It's like naming your application under CGI:: namespace if it's supposed to run on CGI and that is a really bad choice and would confuse people badly.
and the 2009 Plack Advent Calendar goes even further with
Think twice before using Plack::App::* namespace. Plack::App namespace is for middleware components that do not act as a wrapper but rather an endpoint. Proxy, File, Cascade and URLMap are the good examples. If you write a blog application using Plack, Never call it Plack::App::Blog, okay? Name your software by what it does, not how it's written.
OK, sorry, I got this wrong when publishing Plack::App::AutoCRUD -- but to my excuse, I'm not alone, several other CPAN authors did the same.

The app is quite young, so it is still time to repair its name (even if this operation will be quite tedious, because it involves changes in all module sources, in the CPAN distribution, in the github repository name, and in the upcoming YAPC::EU::2014 talk). But if I want to be a good citizen and engage into such an operation, what should be the proper name ? The CPAN namespace is becoming a bit crowded, as already noted 2 years ago by Joel Berger. For choosing a name, there seem to be several controversial and perhaps contradictory principles :
  • CPAN is for modules, not for apps  : this was argued in 2008 in a Perlmonk discussion on the same topic ; however, many people replied in disagreement. I disagree too : publishing a Perl app on CPAN fully makes sense because we take advantage of the CPAN infrastructure for tests, dependency management, publication, etc. Furthermore, applications can be extended or forked, just like modules, so CPAN is a perfect environment for sharing.
  • publish under the App::* namespace : this is the PAUSE recommendation. But applications in the App::* namespace are mainly  command-line utilities, which is quite different from Web applications. As a matter of fact, nobody used yet the App::Web namespace -- maybe it's time to start ?
  • use a ::Web or ::WebApp suffix at the end of the module name :  I never saw this as a recommendation, but nevertheless many distributions adopted this approach. This is certainly appropriate if the main goal is to publish a functionality Foo::Bar, and by the way, there is also a web app at Foo::Bar::WebApp. But if the purpose of the whole distribution is just a web app, this approach tends to create a new top-level namespace, which is not considered good practice. Should I choose AutoCRUD::WebApp ? I think not, because other people might want to use the AutoCRUD::* namespace.
  • avoid top-level namespaces : this used to be an important recommendation, but it doesn't seem to be well respected any more :-( -- nowadays I see more and more CPAN distributions taking up top-level names. I won't cite any particular example, not to offend anybody, but it's quite obvious if you look at the list of top-level namespaces .... and unfortunately many of those top-level names give no clue whatsoever about what kind of functionality will be found in the associated distribution.
  • hide the technology underlying your app : the Plack argument above says that the app should be named from its functionality, not from its implementation technology. Well ... I'm not so sure that this is always appropriate. Many modules sit under the Tie::Hash::* namespace, just because they used the tied hash technology, for providing various kinds of functionalities.
    Concerning  "Plack", when I see that keyword in a module name, I know that a) this is Web technology, and b) this will work on any kind of web server (as opposed to modules names containing "Apache" or "Apache2"), and I consider this to be useful information for a potential user. On the opposite, I didn't want to name my module DBIx::DataModel::AutoCRUD, even if it uses DBIx::DataModel quite heavily, because that's not hardwired into the architecture and I could easily imagine a later adaptation for supporting as well DBIx::Class.
So in the end I will probably end up with something like App::Web::AutoCRUD or WebApp::AutoCRUD ... unless somebody comes up with a better suggestion !

PS : see also Catalyst::Plugin::AutoCRUD .. which can be used either as a Catalyst plugin or as an application on its own.





1 comment:

  1. My recommendation, especially for larger projects, is use a branded top-level namespace. Make up some new word or apply a dictionary word unrelated to programming, and use that to brand your project, also taking the top-level namespace. The key is that this name is non-descriptive initially, but eventually people will see that word and associate it with your project specifically. Examples include Moose and Plack.

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