One of the nice features of Perl is the enormous number of extension one can get from CPAN. It is also one the problems. If an application relays on several CPAN modules it needs to either include them in its own distribution or the user/system administrator will have to install the modules using CPAN.pm or some other method. While there is a huge improvement in the ease of installation of modules using CPAN.pm, it is still a problem. Especially on shared web hosting system

I think it would be nice if on standard systems the installed Perl module would cover more areas.

According to this talk of Nick, Perl 5.10 will no longer be "one size fits all". There are plans to have various size dists.

On the other hand in this thread of the perl5-porters about the roadmap for 5.10, while Hugo seem to be in favour incorporating Module::Build, CPANPLUS and Inline or a minimal subset of it, I have not seen the issue of various sized dists come up. Have they maybe dropped the idea ?

From various other threads here and here I conclude that I might not be the only one who thinks having more CPAN modules in the core might make Perl more attractive to the developers. It will be easier to distribute software if all their prerequisites are already installed.

On the other hand for any software eventually you will need to get additional modules or newer version of existing modules so maybe having a much larger number of CPAN modules installed on a system won't solve the problem.

So I am wondering what do you monks think about this ?
Would such a large Perl installation solve any problem or would it make worse ?
Which modules would you include in such a distribution ?

Let me put here my short list

• Module::Build, CPANLUS - but these two will likely get in 5.10 anyway
• Test::* a number of test related modules
• DBI
• DBD::SQLite
• Class::DBI - and its Plugins
• CGI::Appliation and its Plugins
• Kwiki with its horde of Plugins
• Some XML related tools (e.g. XML::Simple)
• Modules listed in the Phalanx 100 that don't have too many external dependencies (e.g DBD::Oracle will need to be left out I guess)

So what do you think ?

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