README

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This is the dalek-plugins repo.  It's where I hack on the RSS feed plugins
running on "dalek", a bot in #parrot on the MagNET IRC network (irc.perl.org).

The bot is running the "botnix" software.  These are botnix plugins, written
in Perl.  They register a timer callback, which polls RSS feeds and creates
channel output as necessary.

=head1 RAISON D'ÊTRE

Parrot is quickly spreading out, and all of a sudden there are lots of source
control repositories to keep up with.  But we still want to see all of these
awesome things happening, regardless of where the commit went.  To do this, we
need to track lots of RSS and ATOM feeds.  We also track feeds from a couple of
parrot-related wikis.

=head1 IMPLEMENTATION

Fortunately, the servers providing these feeds are generally only running one of
a very few software packages, like trac, github, googlecode, or svnweb.  Thus,
we only really need one parser per server software type, and the actual plugins
can be simple subclasses which just specify the feed location and repo name.  
This is already done, at least for github and googlecode.  Others are on the way.