App::cpx

(Picture from Erda Estremera)

Background

I'm sometimes doing Front End dev.

Or sometimes the best tool for the job is only installable via npm.

It can be scripts to "uglify" or "beautify" css/js, optimize svg files (svgo) or clients to SaaS platforms (wrangler).

Actually, it's not that important if it's part of javascript ecosystem, what I want is just to execute them!

The usual process: I start testing it locally, quickly and in a "trash-able" way, then install in a continuous integration pipeline, then forget 😄

So far, do you feel some resemblance with some periodical process or yours?

For this purpose, I'm using frequently npx (now part of npm).

Do you see now where I'm going to? 🤔

App::cpx, a npx-like for CPAN

I just uploaded App::cpx for this purpose.

Give cpx a binary and it will find it in CPAN, install it for you then execute it.

$ cpx hr -s 40
🎯 Found [bin/hr]
📦 Release to install [https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/W/WO/WOLDRICH/App-term-hr-0.11.tar.gz]
🔧 Will install into /home/tib/cpx-test/.cpx
DONE install Term-ExtendedColor-0.504
DONE install App-term-hr-0.11
2 distributions installed.
=======================================

(purpose of hr is to draw horizontal lines)

Or another example with mlocate:

$  cpx mlocate Redis Moo
🎯 Found [bin/mlocate]
📦 Release to install [https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/C/CE/CELOGEEK/App-Module-Locate-0.7.tar.gz]
🔧 Will install into /home/tib/cpx-test/.cpx
DONE install Module-Locate-1.80
DONE install Module-Build-0.4234
DONE install App-Module-Locate-0.7
3 distributions installed.
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Redis.pm
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Moo.pm

mlocate is a script that lives in App::Module::Locate. It's an utility to "find a module by its name".

cpx saves you from some frustrating tries:

• Is it cpm install App::mlocate?
• OK try capitalize cpm install App::Mlocate, I know some authors do that
• Hmm maybe simply locate like this cpm install App::locate
• Oh wait, capitalize cpm install App::Locate
• Raaah! Stop it and open MetaCPAN and search
• OK it's cpm install App::Module::Locate but now it's installed locally, how do I set local::lib? Maybe I should install globally
• Hmm I will install globally even if it can be a bit dirty for a one time use

And at start were you 100% sure mlocate was something that exists in CPAN? 🤔

cpx saves you from this pain and hides you the internals of installing the module, if missing.

When running cpx again, it won't reinstall but reuse the already installed binary:

$ cpx mlocate Redis Moo
⚓ Found executable already installed
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Redis.pm
/usr/local/share/perl/5.34.0/Moo.pm

Your companion for Continuous Integration

$ curl -sL https://git.io/cpm | sudo perl - install -g App::cpx
$ cpx hr -s 40

In GitHub Actions, it would give something like this:

name : Test cpx
on: push
jobs:
  cpx:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Install cpx
        run: curl -sL https://git.io/cpm | sudo perl - install -g App::cpx
      - name: cpx hr 
        run: cpx hr -s 40

And see the result:

Conclusion

As of now, the code for this small utility is ridiculously simple (source), but sometimes good ideas (yes, all glory to myself 😀) are simple to implement.

Resources

• I'm still lazy - Great module discussed here and I stole the idea of using App::cpm::CLI