Dzil plugins: GitHub::Meta vs GithubMeta

"Dear lazyweb: how do I add a github repository link to my dist-zilla dist.ini?"

Curtis Poe (@ovidperl) via twitter

Ovid asked how to add git repo information to a dist.ini file. Both Dist::Zilla::Plugin::GitHub::Meta and Dist::Zilla::Plugin::GithubMeta were suggested, along with the old-school Dist::Zilla::Plugin::MetaResources.

I've used MetaResources to include repository information in my dist.ini files. Which plugin should I use now: GitHub::Meta GithubMeta?

My MetaResources usage is pretty simple: homepage + repository information. The GitHub::Meta and GithubMeta versions are nearly the same from the dist.ini side, both have the same format for manually overriding the default homepage:

#MetaResources Github example:
[MetaResources]
homepage        = http://lowlevelmanager.com/
repository.web  = http://github.com/spazm/app-pm-website
repository.url  = http://github.com/spazm/app-pm-website.git
repository.type = git

## GithubMeta version
[GithubMeta]
homepage = http://lowlevelmanager.com/

## GitHub::Meta version
[GitHub::Meta]
homepage = http://lowlevelmanager.com/

There are differences if we look inside the modules. GithubMeta makes a system call to git to get remote url(s). The plugin will only run if called from within a git repository and with git in $PATH. If it finds a github.com url, it uses that as the remote. This url is then parsed to get the github user name and project name.

Conversely, GitHub::Meta shells out to git to get the github.user entry from git config via git config github.user and then makes an API call to github to get the project name. It does have an interesting feature where it can check if the checkout is a fork and use the upstream information instead.

GitHub::Meta could be nice if you want to go all-in and auto-create the repository with GitHub::Create and push updates with GitHub::Update (actually, this just seems to change the homepage url?), all of them will require the github.user configuration set in git. The docs suggest using GitHub::Create with Git::Init. I must admit, I'm behind the DZil times, as I'm not even sure where to store the default plugin options to apply when running dzil new, to actually trigger these plugins.

GithubMeta does what you'd expect and does it with a minimum of fuss. No extra options to set in your git configuration, but you do have to have the github remote added to your repo by other means. This seems a much slimmer change for existing repositories.