in reply to CPAN authors, clean up your directories

From Perl at a glance
The effective size [222 Mb] includes only the most current releases of everything in the Module List, and excludes perl distributions.
If they can programatically calculate the "effective size" and there is a real market for CPAN on a CD (ugh, why?) couldn't they just make an "effective CPAN on CD" and be done with it?

I don't see why anyone would even want a CPAN CD, since it would be obsolete almost as soon as its pressed. Unless you're using it to jumpstart a local mirror of CPAN, whats the point?

-Blake

  • Comment on Re: CPAN authors, clean up your directories

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(kudra: use of a CPAN CD) Re2: CPAN authors, clean up your directories
by kudra (Vicar) on Oct 14, 2002 at 09:12 UTC
    Although portions of the CD would become obsolete when the CD was made, large parts of the CPAN don't change often.

    At YAPC::Europe 2001, we distributed such a CD, using a script by Johan and some manual cleaning to get CPAN to fit on one CD. We decided to do this because we had two sponsors who wanted to sponsor CDs, but our proceedings didn't require more than one. We figured the CPAN CD might be of some use to people with slow links.

    For this year's YAPC::Europe there was a discussion on the list about whether the CD was worthwhile, and several people indicated they were in fact using theirs. I think they went ahead and made the CD.

    The only person who I've spoken with who is using the CD is Nick Clark. He has a slow link, and so he uses the CD as an incomplete local mirror, only fetching a module from another mirror if the version on the CD isn't the most recent. (For anyone who might have a similar problem, there's an answer in the CPANPLUS FAQ on how to set this up with CPANPLUS.)

    I think this has more to do with the effort to break Perl in to manageable chunks. A CD probably isn't the best reason, but it would be nice to see deprecated modules somehow seperated from the rest (yet still available).

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      He has a slow link, and so he uses the CD as an incomplete local mirror, only fetching a module from another mirror if the version on the CD isn't the most recent. (For anyone who might have a similar problem, there's an answer in the CPANPLUS FAQ on how to set this up with CPANPLUS.)
      And CPAN.pm does this by default as well. Put the http: URL first, and the file: URL later, and it'll automatically get the indicies from the first URL, but look at all file: URLs first for supplying the actual files, falling back to the first URL only if it cannot be gotten "locally". It's quite slick (and documented {grin}).

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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Re: Re: CPAN authors, clean up your directories
by Beatnik (Parson) on Oct 14, 2002 at 09:05 UTC
    Well, portions of that CD would be obsolete the moment it's pressed. Some modules only have new releases every 6 months or worse, they don't get updated at all (checking cpan directory - argh).I am in favour of fitting it all on a CD but you do make a point on why that is not doable of using only the lateste (and perhaps the version before that - see GD). The CPAN CD I got at YAPC::Eu did come in handy... You never know when you're on a plain/train/boat/spacecraft and you just want a play with some module :)

    Anyway, cleaning out my CPAN dir is on my TODO list

    Greetz
    Beatnik
    ...Perl is like sex: if you're doing it wrong, there's no fun to it.
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