"Never use dependencies other than what comes with the default install,"

The drawbacks are added complexity and a dependency of perhaps questionable value (for this application: notice I have no heartache using CGI :).

I think such attitudes totally miss the point of Open Source in general, and CPAN in particular. What is the point of sharing software, if people balk at the slightess inconvenience and don't want to use what's available. Does everything have to be delivered to your doorstep?

It seems that certain people would prefer that Perl comes with everything that's available on CPAN - and then some. Beside that that would make it impossible to ever release a version of Perl again (just look at how hard it is to release 5.8.1, which is partially due to the bloat, and wanting to service everyone).

It's far better for packages to live on CPAN. Then at least there is the potential that they will be update soon after a bug is revealed. Suppose Regexp::Common came with 5.8.0, and it had a bug. The earliest release that would fix the bug will be 5.8.1, which, if it came out today, would be 14 months after 5.8.0. And if you have a hard time to convince people to install a module, think how hard it's going to be to convince them to install a new version of Perl! And if there would be a bug in Regexp::Common released with 5.8.1, do you have any idea how long you have to wait for a new release? The track to 5.10 was started in July 2002. It's now September 2003, and there isn't even any sign of a 5.9.0. You might have to wait *years* for a bugfix.

Having said that, Regexp::Common is easy to install. It's a pure Perl module, and I don't have intention to ever turn it into something that isn't pure Perl. All you need to do is (recursively) copy the files in the 'lib' directory of the distribution. How hard can that be? But even if you don't want to install Regexp::Common, there is always the option to copy the code. Of course, your own license may prevent that, and you do have to do more work in case the code you copied gets upgraded, but the license of Regexp::Common allows you to go this way.

Abigail

In reply to Re: Dependencies, or, How Common is Regexp::Common? by Abigail-II
in thread Dependencies, or, How Common is Regexp::Common? by legLess

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