Comments on: The CPAN’s new clothes

By: lwsitu

lwsitu — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:27:57 +0000

@govi You can use "cpan> install D/DR/DROLSKY/DateTime-0.49.tar.gz" to install a specific version

By: govi

govi — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:48:30 +0000

Following up on the comparison of CPAN with Ruby gems, it seems that CPAN has much broader and deeper support. However, from the little I have seen, gem supports installing a specific version of a module while CPAN only works with the most recent upload of a module. Is that hard to fix?

I agree also that CPAN and many perl sites are pretty darn ugly and in very out-dated style — kinda makes it look like Perl isn’t very good for the web, or best at producing an antique look. “Modern Perl” and “Ironman” sites seem to be turning things around and it gives this newbie inspiration to stick with Perl. Planet Perl is yet another hideous perl site. Long live Plane Perl Iron Man!

By: frankg

frankg — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:22:33 +0000

I like this blog post because it keeps the problem on the forefront, instead of something that is forgotten about. I would not mind seeing a continuing series:

“The status of CPAN — How the best is getting better”

I think we need more devil’s advocate type bloggers. There are many people writing great CPAN modules and others wondering what should be written next. It would be nice to have a voting system that would show what perl modules perl users want most.

One last note… Please keep the blog post positive. Nobody likes a whiner. I think the information is great but put a positive spin on it, like:

“The top ten perl issues that will make perl even greater than it is already.”

just my 2 cents.

By: meme

meme — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:28:09 +0000

CPAN isn’t FAIL. Compare cpan to rubygems and then rethink what you have said. Just look at search.cpan.org: RT, Forums, etc. In my opinion it’s enough. Many people use github, but many use something else, like bitbucket and others. Forcing people to use the only right thing (git) would do more wrong than good. However, github/bitbucket - cpan integration is welcomed.

By: name

name — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:20:59 +0000

In addition to Planet Perl, you forgot Perlsphere, Use.Perl, and Andy Lester’s web fappery in your description of this sad passive-aggressive internet slap-fight. And you are forbidden from mentioning The Editor except by using the mandatory SEO phrase “Padre comma the Perl IDE” with a link to its home page. I hope these modern/enlightened/whatever Perl people are making money from making fools of themselves…

By: Sartak

Sartak — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:51:49 +0000

However, the blog posts’ medium quality hasn’t changed at all — and neither have the subjects.

I disagree with this entirely. Perhaps you were not reading too closely previously. Take a look at two related posts from my pre-ironman and my post-ironman blogs:

pre: http://use.perl.org/~sartak/journal/38309 post: http://sartak.blogspot.com/2009/05/parameterized-roles.html

The former has very little actual content, just the syntax. The latter is a lot more worthy of reading. This kind of improvement has happened for a lot of the Perl writers whose blogs I read.

By: zbigniew.lukasiak.name/

zbigniew.lukasiak.name/ — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:02:17 +0000

There is a mailing list dedicated to the task of rethinking CPAN: http://groups.google.com/group/rethinking-cpan . It’s been quiet for some time - but at least you could find more people with similar sentiments there. As Jess noted above there is no need to convince people - the only problem is how to organize and start the work.

By: Fedov

Fedov — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:50:23 +0000

Although it is true, that complaining doesn’t solve the issue: I couldn’t agree more with this complaint. http://www.perl.com/ needs to become the central point of information for Perl, with links to everything important, and not an unmaintained subpage of O’Reilly. And I believe that a standard graphical tool for interacting with the cpan should be available for windows, mac and the important linux distros - this would really ease the use of cpan for newcomers!

By: Burak Gürsoy

Burak Gürsoy — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:43:48 +0000

You have a fundamental error. All the features you talk about are outsourced. CPAN only has the modules, RT, Forum, Search, etc eveything else is maintained by separate people. And since search.cpan.org is the de facto standard, you can see that some modules have a repository listed in their page: http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/Test-Simple-0.86/

> Dear Github guys, if you happen to read this, please host the CPAN for us

Yeah this may help but I don’t prefer git for my own projects. I only use it for gists and to contribute to other projects not to host mine. I prefer Hg for this. You know, RT is the standard bug tracker but some people (like Schwern) does not use it and use something else instead and the link is given in the module page. My point is, not everyone likes the defaults so there is no point in dragging github (for example) into the process. Tim Toady told me that :)

And I think that the Forum/Annotated CPAN etc is not a huge success because they work like the standard forums which is a fading technology IMHO. If PerlMonks did not exist and we wanted to start it today it will be another failure. It works today because it already has a community.

But you’re right as a whole. We need a more standardised interface to CPAN.

By: dan.foolishmortal.org/

dan.foolishmortal.org/ — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:54:27 +0000

This sentiment is being echo’d a lot lately. You seem to have the know-how. I vote for you to get in touch with TPF and make it happen.