I can see many disadvantages of having two releases of a module with different content and the same $VERSION value so I would never do that.

Historically, Sendmail::PMilter has used the traditional X.XX_XX form for dev releases of the dist. Unless you have a tangibly good reason to stop that practice why not stick with it?

Personally, I'd keep the $VERSION in the module and the version number of the dist in perfect sync as that way there can be no confusion.

Thanks again.

So aiming for example for an eventual release of 1.21, instead of

sendmail-pmilter-1.21-TRIAL3.tar.gz

you'd suggest for example

sendmail-pmilter-1.20_01.tar.gz

with

our $VERSION = '1.20_01';

in the .pm files themselves?

All fine by me if it's acceptable. It just seems that there's a lot of different ways that people do it. :/

Yes, that's precisely what I would do in your shoes. It's not immediately clear to me why you are jumping to 1.20/1.21 given the last release is 1.00 but if there's a good reason, that's fine.

There are indeed lots of different ways that people do it. For your own dists which you might release from scratch then please feel free to choose your own method. But when it's an established dist which you have taken over then I think it's only sensible and courteous to the existing users to continue the already-established practice there.

As recommended here I released the new module as sendmail-pmilter-1.20_01 and the testing bots seem to be happy with it so far.

Almost by chance I saw that it's recommended to have a CONTRIBUTING file.

The testing bots don't seem to have mentioned that I didn't have one, but I made one and now there's a 1.20_02 version in the works.

I say 'almost' by chance because I was looking for help with quality.

I'm sort of a fan of quality, in the sense of Title21, Chapter1, s820 or ISO9000 - both of which I've worked to.

The closest I've got so far is a link on https://metacpan.org/release/Sendmail-PMilter labelled 'Kwalitee'. This links to a page which shows that a bot has done some useful checks on V1.00 of the module, but I don't see a way to get those checks dome on the development version.

Am I looking in the wrong place?

In https://www.cpan.org/modules/04pause.html there's mention of the QA mailing list (perl-qa-help@perl.org) so I checked the archives.

Three posts in the last two years.

I'm looking for help with bringing the content of Sendmail::PMilter-1.2x up to scratch - when I can find a definition of 'scratch'.

Where else should I be looking?

but I don't see a way to get those checks (kwalitee) dome on the development version.

It's right here.

The CONTRIBUTING file is a relatively recent phenomenon so there are fewer references to such a thing in the documentaion for module authors. If you are concerned about quality metrics then I would suggest three and a half sources:

• The kwalitee measure as already referred to.
• The test matrix - all green is good.
• The test coverage - the higher the percentages the better.
• and the half: Perl::Critic. It is highly opinionated but it might make some recommendations with which you agree. Just try not to get too obsessive about it.

It might help to unify things if you capitalised the dist name for future releases too.

Good luck.

Thanks once again for your very helpful responses.

Short of constructing the link manually in the browser's location bar, how would I be expected to navigate to https://cpants.cpanauthors.org/release/GWHAYWOOD/sendmail-pmilter-1.20_01 ? Is there a page somewhere with a link to that page?

The test matrix looks good, it was about the only thing that had made any sense to me so far.

I'd seen the "test coverage" link but it made no sense to me.
I'm beginning to think it tells me which statements in the released modules get exercised by the tests in t/, is that right?
Where is it documented?

I'll take a longer look at Perl::Critic, but at first glance it seems more a style thing than what I'd call "quality".

Some specific points:

• You suggest capitals for the "dist name". I guess I don't understand again but isn't the dist name Sendmail::PMilter ?
  I think I've been misled by downloads from, er, another place, which don't seem to keep the capitalisation in the archive (.zip) files.
  Do you mean the name of the tarball? Obviously it's no problem to change the name of the tarball.
• I've wandered around for days looking for an issue tracker for the development releases like there is for the full releases.
  Is there such a thing?
• The Kwalitee thing talks about META.yml or META.json but the tools create MYMETA.* instead.
  Do I just rename them?
• Unrelated, but it's starting to get to me: Are there alternative interfaces to this (for want of a better description) bulletin board?

Thanks again. I'll be back, I guess. :)