$Id: README,v 1.79 2001/07/15 19:43:28 rcaputo Exp $

-----------
What POE Is
-----------

POE is an application kernel that uses event driven state machines as
threads.  It includes a high-level I/O library that hides most of the
usual client/server tediosity.  It has been developed and used in
mission-critical systems since August 1998.

---------------------
Documentation Roadmap
---------------------

The POE manpage's SEE ALSO section lists the topics covered in each
manpage.  It's a good starting place.

The CHANGES file lists nearly every change made to POE since 1998,
including ones which have broken backward compatibility.  The
backward-breaking changes are marked with exclamation points so they
stand out.

The TODO file includes a roadmap of changes which may break backward
compatibility.  Each change includes dates of earliest breakage, which
means you have at least until those dates to update critical programs.

--------------------
Distribution Details
--------------------

This distribution comes with several sample and tutorial programs in
its samples/ directory.  These programs are NOT installed because they
have limited use and take up a lot of space.

The lib/ directory includes a few useful utilities, including a basic
test coverage module, harness, and report.  The test coverage summary
at the end of this file was generated by that system.  These utilities
aren't installed either.

The test programs, in t/, may also be interesting examples, although
they're more geared towards exercising POE.  The tests also aren't
installed, in case you were wondering.

All in all, the actual installed bits of POE are probably around a
third of the total distribution, and about a quarter of B<that> is
documentation.  The generally usable bits of POE are pretty small.

------------------
Basic Installation
------------------

POE may be installed through the CPAN shell in the usual CPAN shell
manner.  It typically is:

  perl -MCPAN -e 'install POE'

It involves a little more work if you have an older CPAN shell:

  perl -MCPAN -e shell
  install POE

To install on a Win32 machine using ActiveState's PPM:

  ppm install http://poe.sourceforge.net/packages/POE.ppd
 
--------------------------
Getting The Latest Version
--------------------------

POE can also be installed manually, although Win32 users are
recommended to use the PPM instead.  Tarballs are available from at
least three sources:

The most recent stable release can be found at your favorite CPAN
mirror.  If you don't have a favorite CPAN mirror, there's always:

  ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/R/RC/RCAPUTO/

The most recent development snapshot is available from two locations:

  http://poe.perl.org/
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/poe/

The SourceForge project includes a CVS repository browser, so you can
look around to see what's new.  It also has facilities for people to
submit bug reports, patches, and support requests.

---------------------------
Building The Latest Version
---------------------------

Downloading and unpacking the distribution are left as an exercise for
the reader.  See the previous section for tarball locations.

System requirements and copatibility issues are covered in the main
POE manpage.  You can preview them before building POE.

  perldoc ./POE.pm

Please read the CHANGES and TODO files if you already have programs
which use POE.  They contain advance notice of changes which may break
existing code.

  less ./CHANGES
  less ./TODO

If everything looks good, build POE:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make

... then test the distribution.  This is an important step since it
also ferrets out the modules POE needs.  It reports on the POE
components which won't work because of missing dependencies, and it
recommends things to install.  Please read the dependency report
carefully.

  make test

Now you're ready to install POE, but first you may want to look at its
samples.  Some of the samples may be stale: they might not work with
the most recent distribution, but everything is okay as long as "make
test" has passed.

All the programs in the samples subdirectory are written to run from
the distribution directory without POE being installed yet.

  cd ./samples
  ls -l

  [try some]

  cd ..

Finally you can install it:

  make install

------------
Test Results
------------

Thanks to a-mused and dynweb for their testing time.  Someday
SourceForge will get its compile farm together again, and I'll be able
to add six more test systems to this list.

The wallclock seconds are constrained mainly by delays within the
tests themselves.  For a more accurate determination of POE's speed,
balance the CPU seconds against the test machine's hardware and
operating system.

** POE 0.15 on FreeBSD (dngor)

Hardware: Athlon-1000; 512MB RAM
System  : FreeBSD 4.3-STABLE
Perl    : 5.6.1
Gtk     : 0.7005
Tk      : 800.022
Event   : 0.81
IO::Pty : 0.01

All tests successful.
Files=26, Tests=494, 83 wallclock secs ( 7.78 cusr +  0.55 csys =  8.33 CPU)

** POE 0.1401 on Solaris/SunOS 5.8 (dynweb)

Hardware: Ultra-80; 2x UltraSparc II-450; 1GB RAM
System  : SunOS 5.8
Perl    : 5.6.1
Gtk     : (not installed)
Tk      : 800.023
Event   : 0.81
IO::Pty : 0.01

All tests successful, 1 test skipped.
Files=26, Tests=468, 85 wallclock secs (13.07 cusr +  1.35 csys = 14.42 CPU)

** POE 0.1401 on Linux (titanic)

Hardware: dual Celeron 500; 265MB RAM
System  : Linux 2.2.15 SMP
Perl    : v5.6.0
Gtk     : (not installed)
Tk      : (not installed)
Event   : 0.79
IO::Pty : 0.01

All tests successful, 2 tests skipped.
Files=26, Tests=459, 81 wallclock secs (17.16 cusr +  0.96 csys = 18.12 CPU)

** POE 0.1203 on Linux (a-mused)

Hardware: Celeron 600; unknown RAM
System  : Linux 2.4.0-test12
Perl    : 5.005_03
Gtk     : (unknown)
Tk      : (not installed)
Event   : (installed; unknown version)

All tests successful, 2 tests skipped.
Files=23, Tests=415, 98 wallclock secs (14.22 cusr + 0.63 csys = 14.85 CPU)

-------------
Test Coverage
-------------

While the test coverage numbers are statistically meaningless, they
still present a fun challenge and some measure of assurance that the
authors care about POE's quality.  Here's your grain of salt.  Lime
and tequila will be provided upon request. :)

The "Ran" and "Total" numbers are breakpoints that perl's debugger can
step through.  The "Covered" number is the percentage of breakpoints
that were actually stepped through during testing.

These results are for version 0.15.

  Source File                         =   Ran / Total = Covered
  POE.pm                              =    23 /    24 =  95.83%
  POE/Component.pm                    =     5 /     5 = 100.00%
  POE/Component/Server/TCP.pm         =    28 /    32 =  87.50%
  POE/Driver.pm                       =     5 /     5 = 100.00%
  POE/Driver/SysRW.pm                 =    42 /    54 =  77.78%
  POE/Filter.pm                       =     5 /     5 = 100.00%
  POE/Filter/Block.pm                 =    37 /    37 = 100.00%
  POE/Filter/Grep.pm                  =    11 /    19 =  57.89%
  POE/Filter/HTTPD.pm                 =    11 /    88 =  12.50%
  POE/Filter/Line.pm                  =    77 /    82 =  93.90%
  POE/Filter/Map.pm                   =    11 /    19 =  57.89%
  POE/Filter/RecordBlock.pm           =    22 /    41 =  53.66%
  POE/Filter/Reference.pm             =    69 /    75 =  92.00%
  POE/Filter/Stackable.pm             =    17 /    40 =  42.50%
  POE/Filter/Stream.pm                =    11 /    11 = 100.00%
  POE/Kernel.pm                       =   868 /  1119 =  77.57%
  POE/Kernel/Event.pm                 =     1 /     9 =  11.11%
  POE/Kernel/Gtk.pm                   =     2 /    17 =  11.76%
  POE/Kernel/Select.pm                =     6 /    12 =  50.00%
  POE/Kernel/Tk.pm                    =     2 /    19 =  10.53%
  POE/NFA.pm                          =    90 /   173 =  52.02%
  POE/Pipe/OneWay.pm                  =    20 /    39 =  51.28%
  POE/Pipe/TwoWay.pm                  =    23 /    43 =  53.49%
  POE/Preprocessor.pm                 =   154 /   183 =  84.15%
  POE/Session.pm                      =   143 /   198 =  72.22%
  POE/Wheel.pm                        =    11 /    11 = 100.00%
  POE/Wheel/FollowTail.pm             =    87 /   108 =  80.56%
  POE/Wheel/ListenAccept.pm           =    51 /    65 =  78.46%
  POE/Wheel/ReadWrite.pm              =   129 /   215 =  60.00%
  POE/Wheel/Run.pm                    =   176 /   243 =  72.43%
  POE/Wheel/SocketFactory.pm          =   204 /   248 =  82.26%
  All Told                            =  2341 /  3239 =  72.28%

Thanks for reading!

-- Rocco Caputo / troc@netrus.net / poe.perl.org / poe.sourceforge.net
