in reply to Re^4: [OT] cpantesters.org is playing hard to get.
in thread [OT] cpantesters.org is playing hard to get.
- Bad things for users
- When an installation fails for the user they have no idea whether this is their problem alone or a systematic problem with the dist
- When a newer version is released the user is unaware of any problems there might be with it before downloading/installing
- If there is a systematic problem with the current version the user has no reference as to which other versions are problem-free
- Bad things for authors
- No way to tell if a manual bug report received for any given platform is unique to that user
- No way to tell if a just-released dist has a glaring error (until hopefully manually notified by someone much later)
- Having to go back-and-forth with a bug reporter to get case info rather than having the full smoke tester failure available at a single click
- No way to tell if a dependency of their code has a usable current version or if the last n versions are all usable, etc.
- Bad things for perl
- Another important piece of infrastructure gone making it harder than it used to be for everyone to use the language (see also: AnnoCPAN, CPAN Ratings, etc.)