Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI

Nice node..

On the note of the questions at the end, I have to say thats what this community is all about. I firmly agree with that.

On a different note I think part of the issue is CPAN's organization of modules, and what information can be garnished about modules quickly. Imagine if you did a search for say URI on CPAN, and instead of getting all of the URI:: modules, and anything that has URI in its name or description, you get a list of modules starting from most frequent downloads to least frequent downloads.. Then you could quickly see what modules are being used more by the community at large, as well as close runner-ups. This way your search space has been cut down drastically and you can compare similar modules functionality as you see fit, without wasting time working with modules whose names sound close, but don't provide what you thought they did..

But that leads to newer modules possibly being totally ignored as people see the most frequent d/l and simply go with that as opposed to a newer module which may fix "features" in other similar modules.. So I'm not sure what to say aside from I think CPAN could have better sorting and searching capabilities

MMMMM... Chocolaty Perl Goodness.....

Comment on Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI

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Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 14, 2003 at 14:11 UTC
First, this wouldn't be possible at all, as there is no central all-controling CPAN site. There are many mirrors, and not all mirrors are known. Furthermore, people put CPAN on CDROMs, and distribute them. Second, download figures don't mean anything. I may download two modules, ditch one of them because it doesn't even want to build, and just use the second. But I still have downloaded both modules the same amount of times. Third, it would actually "favour" buggy, unstable, modules. They (hopefully) get new releases, and hence, new downloads, because people hope the bugs get fixed. Stable modules don't get updated often, so there's less need for an upgrade (and even if there's a new release, there's often no need to bother with an upgrade). So, they would get downloaded less often. Abigail	[reply]
Re: Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by Anonymous Monk on Apr 15, 2003 at 03:21 UTC
Good points. About the lack of an "all-controling CPAN site" - do you think this is a good thing? Aside from the increased resource benefits and (possibly) reduced data loss from creating mirrors, are there any other positives you can think of? Do you think it outweighs problems of Mirrors being set up that could distribute (intentionally or not) buggy/trojaned modules? Also, does anyone know what measures are currently in place to prevent this? thanks.	[reply]
Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 15, 2003 at 07:30 UTC
I don't see any benefits for having an all-controlled CPAN site. What would be the point? And of course, currently it's now possible to upload buggy or trojaned modules. Remember that PAUSE/CPAN lets anyone upload anything. The only rule CPAN has that uploaded source code must be freely distributable. That's it. There's no "seal of quality" slapped on anything uploaded to CPAN. Uploaded and distributing software over the internet is old. Older than Perl itself. Remember that perl1 was distributed in comp.sources, which was actively being archived. Tell me, what would be the advantages of an all-controlling CPAN site? Abigail	[reply]
Re: Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by Anonymous Monk on Apr 16, 2003 at 02:44 UTC
Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 16, 2003 at 07:38 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re: Re: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by DapperDan (Pilgrim) on Apr 14, 2003 at 14:09 UTC
Great thread hacker. The sentiment of what you're saying certainly rings true with this Perl journeyman. ++ I agree with what you're saying too l2kashe. However, I think the problem is more general than you suggest; perhaps a more holistic approach is needed for CPAN metadata? I would like if the functionality of rt.cpan.org were more integrated in to the page for each distribution (or at least a link to the relevant rt.cpan.org page, so I don't have to dig it up), and to make it easier for people to post their sample code and other comments. I note that there are a bunch of great ideas in schwern's CPANTS talk. One just has to look at how the PHP online manual is done (look at the URL manual page as an example) to see another potential direction that this could be taken in.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by adrianh (Chancellor) on Apr 14, 2003 at 20:36 UTC
Then you could quickly see what modules are being used more by the community at large, as well as close runner-ups. You might want to take a look at CPANSTATS.	[reply]
Re: Re^2: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by Anonymous Monk on Apr 15, 2003 at 03:37 UTC
This is EXACTLY the kind of problem I think hacker is describing. How many other people here knew that there was a module called CPANSTATS, and that it did what the previous monk was describing?	[reply]
Re: Re: Re^2: Perl Monks += TMTOWTDI by belg4mit (Prior) on Apr 15, 2003 at 18:40 UTC
Most anyone (well about 100 at least, based on the number of users :-P) who read acme's journal entry on use Perl. This is something that acme probbaly ought to anounce on perl5-porters or use Perl; proper once satisified with it's state. `-- I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.`	[reply]