I'm happy to announce that I've created a patch, which demerphq applied, that provides a new linktype, [dist://module distro], offering the requested functionality. The basic trick is that search.cpan.org provides a family of URLs which you can use to search for distributions, under the http://search.cpan.org/dist/ root. For example:

As an extra help, I've provided a basic conversion of (double) colons and spaces into a single hyphen, so you can use a more human-friendly link, which still creates the proper link for the common cases. For example: [dist://Class::DBI 0.95] which links to Class::DBI 0.95. I think that should work nicely.

p.s. Did I mention my previous recently added linktype already? [module://module name] (or [mod://module name]) links directly into the module docs of the most recent version of a module. For example: [module://Class::DBI] which yields Class::DBI. It is very strict about your spelling/capitalisation, though. Thank goodness [dist://module name] is more forgiving.

In reply to A new linktype for CPAN: [dist://] by bart
in thread A Modest Proposal for [cpan://module] Shortcuts by simonm

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