What's new on CPAN - December 2023

Jan 9, 2024 by Mathew Korica

Welcome to “What’s new on CPAN”, a curated look at last month’s new CPAN uploads for your reading and programming pleasure. Enjoy!

APIs & Apps

Use App::CheckPerlReleaseFilename to check whether a filename looks like a Perl module release archive
App::FoodColorUtils provides command-line utilities related to food colors
Get info about various scripting language interpreters on your system using App::InterpreterUtils
Use App::Run::Command::ToFail as a base for your “run-command-to-fail” tool
Install a module for all the perls installed on your system with App::cpanm::allperls
App::csvtool provides the main commands for the csvtool wrapper script
For Rex users, Rex::CMDB::YAMLwithRoles collects and merges data from a set of YAML files to provide a configuration management database
RT::Extension::SwitchUsers is an RT extension that provides a way to switch the current logged in user to others defined in user custom field “Switch Users Accounts”

Config & Devops

This month features another slew of Alien modules (Alien finds and builds non-Perl dependencies):
- Alien::Jena::Fuseki for the Jena Fuseki SPARQL server
- Alien::Jena for the Jena semantic web library
- Alien::PlantUML for the PlantUML diagram generator
- Alien::Tarql for Tarql (SPARQL for Tables)
- Alien::YAMLScript for the libyamlscript shared library
- Alien::hdt_java for the hdt-java RDF binary format library
- Alien::pandoc for the pandoc universal document converter
RPM::Verify runs “rpm -v” on every installed rpm, giving you a descriptive hash of the relevant changes
Interpreter::Info gets information about various scripting language interpreters installed on your system

Data

Data::Mirror lessens the pain in retrieving and using remote data sources such as JSON objects, YAML documents, XML instances and CSV files.
Filename::Perl::Release checks whether a filename looks like a CPAN release tarball
A new pair of Date::Holidays-based modules:
- Date::Holidays::IE for Irish national holidays until 2025
- Date::Holidays::NYSE for New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) holidays
Also, a new pair of Graphics::ColorNames-based modules:
- Graphics::ColorNames::FamousLogo for colors used in famous logos
- Graphics::ColorNames::FoodColor for food colors
Many module-categorizing modules this month:
- Acme::CPANModules::FireDiamond lists modules related to fire diamond (NFPA 704 standard)
- Acme::CPANModules::OrderingAndRunningTasks lists modules/tools to order multiple tasks (with possible interdependency) and running them (possibly in parallel)
- Acme::CPANModules::TableData lists TableData-related modules
- Acme::CPANModules::TemporaryChdir lists modules to change directory temporarily
- Acme::CPANModules::WorkingWithDOC lists modules to work with text document formats (DOC, DOCX, ODT)
- Acme::CPANModules::WorkingWithPDF lists modules to work with Excel formats (XLS, XLSX) or other spreadsheet formats like LibreOffice Calc (ODS)
- Acme::PERLANCAR::Test::Require lists modules to test require()
TableData::Business::ID::KAN::Client::Lab::Testing uses the TableData specification to house some data about “accredited testing laboratories”
List words from a WordList module using TableData::WordList
Parse a Transparency and Consent String with GDPR::IAB::TCFv2
Rewrite Graph-based graphs with Graph::Grammar
Music::Dataset::ChordProgressions provides access to hundreds of chord progressions
Read a file in reverse with IO::Reverse

Development & Version Control

Represent an HTML textarea tag with Data::HTML::Textarea
A few new releases to help you benchmark groupings of modules that perform similar tasks:
- Bencher::Scenario::GraphConnectedComponentsModules for graph topological sort modules
- Bencher::Scenario::Interpreters::Startup for scripting language interpreter startup times
- Bencher::Scenario::RandomNumbers for random number-generating modules
- Bencher::Scenarios::Tie for Perl’s tie() mechanism. Tie::Array::NoOp, Tie::Hash::NoOp, Tie::Scalar::NoOp are supporting releases
Keep Dist::Zilla compatible with Perl’s new class system with Dist::Zilla::Plugin::ExplicitPackageForClass
For Test::Mojo users, Test::Mojo::Role::OpenAPI::Modern helps you use OpenAPI::Modern to validate requests and responses
Array::Util::MultiTarget provides functions to perform operations on multiple arrays at once
TheSchwartz::JobScheduler provides an interface to insert a new job into TheSchwartz job queue (maintained by a database)
HealthCheck::Diagnostic::SSH verifies SSH connectivity to a specified host

Language & International

Convert POD to Github-flavored Markdown with Pod::Markdown::Githubert
Text::MustacheTemplate is a Mustache template engine written in pure Perl
New extensions for the Perl-based SPVM language:
- SPVM::Eg generates HTML tags
- SPVM::Encode encodes/decodes strings
- SPVM::Getopt::Long parses command-line options
- SPVM::Resource::Utf8proc bundles the utf8proc library
- SPVM::Time::Piece handles dates and times
- SPVM::Unicode::Normalize normalizes UTF-8
Program in YAML using YAMLScript
Regexp::CharClasses::Thai supplements the UTF-8 character-class definitions available to regular expressions with special groups relevant to Thai linguistics

Science & Mathematics

Generate log-uniform random numbers with Math::Random::LogUniform
CXC::Types::Astro::Coords provides Type::Tiny-compatible types for coordinate conventions used in Astronomy