[Dbix-class] SQL::Abstract 1.x subqueries patch

[BUCHMULLER Norbert]

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:48:56 +0100 Peter Rabbitson
<rabbit+list at rabbit.us> wrote:

> There is a mostly-working-1.x-rc at
> http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/repos/bast/SQL-Abstract/1.x/branches/1.50_RC.
> Patches should be made against it afaik, although it is very possible
> this particular bit has been already implemented.

OK, I didn't know about this RC (I just checked 1.x/trunk and 2.000
trunk).

> Also the branch suffers from major shortage of volunteers. It passes its
> own tests but fails reather hard if subjected to the test suite of
> dbix-class (i.e. added to PERL5LIB before running make test on the dbic
> trunk). So if you can spend some cycles on it, it would be rather
> fantastic.

I've started to investigate & fix some bugs, but it seems that some of
them require modifications to DBIC as well. What's the policy (plan)
here? Can I modify DBIC in such a way that breaks compatibility with older
SQLA versions, or should I attempt to make 1.50 behave the same as prior
versions instead (so that DBIC can work with both an older SQLA or 1.50)?

You know there's an adaptor module DBIC::SQL::Abstract defined in
lib/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm that contains mostly code that should go
into SQL::Abstract - in fact a comment at the beginning confirms that it
is just a temp hack. Now this module calls private, undocumented methods
of SQLA, and some of those are either gone or behave differently. The
cleanest solution would be to migrate to SQLA those part of the code
that are useful in general, and add some more public methods to SQLA
where necessary (eg. C<condition(\%where)> that only returns the
condition, witout the 'WHERE' word prepended to it). But that will break
compatibility with older SQLA versions for granted.

I'm going to take care of the conversion of DBIC test cases to use
SQL::Abstract::Test. I didn't know about the existence of this piece of
canned magic :-), but I like it very much.

norbi