Role reversal

So, in our further investigations into using Moose, I have started to look at using Roles to produce reusable code instead of base classes.

You can find out in the Moose::Manual pages on CPAN about setting them up, but what we had found initially confusing was how much we should make a role do. So our initial investigations just led us to produce ordinary Moose objects to do the functions, but not import them into the consuming objects.

So, we move further on, and find ourselves repeating code as we don't want to import some objects which mostly do other things, so what is the solution.

I'm now taking another look at Roles, to see if that might be the solution, but with another key factor. Keep the role doing as specific a thing as possible.

An example of this is that we often need an object to have methods to expose a run id, a short run name and a run_folder. We do have an object which can provide this, along with other functions, but it is not really reusable in some situations. So I have just done a very small role run::short_info, which can then be used to import just these methods in.

The result, a small amount of (what should be) very reusable code over most, if not all, of our frameworks.

The next one I am doing is run::path_info, which will hopefully give just the next level of features that many need, but not all.

This feels very much the right way to go now, and I hope that we will have a good amount of reusable code which will increase flexibility, and keep the code low maintenance. (Well, let's keep our fingers crossed).

Just now to hope that someone fixes the requires attribute/method in Moose:Role soon.