I'm writing for advice/guidelines on splitting large distributions of Perl modules into smaller sets with dependencies on each other.

In particular I'm referring to Bioperl (www.bioperl.org): http://search.cpan.org/~sendu/bioperl-1.5.2_102/

First ignoring the complexity of the dependencies between every module and how complex it may be to maintain for the Bioperl devs, I have a few questions about splitting up Bioperl into bite-sized chunks:

Is there any reason why Bioperl couldn't/shouldn't be split into separate modules on CPAN each with their correct dependencies to the other Bioperl modules? Then use bundles to group together more overarching modules into larger units consisting of modules for performing a set of tasks? In other words, is there any reason why it shouldn't be split down to the module level?

Bioperl has become very large and as a result, for anyone developing Perl code/applications/scripts that would like to make use of a small number of Bioperl modules, we currently have to depend on the WHOLE set of Bioperl modules rather than the few we need - a huge overhead to ask someone to install all Bioperl in order to run your script/application etc.

Thanks for any advice you may be able to give, I'll report back to the Bioperl devs with responses.

Thanks,
Nathan

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Dr. Nathan S. Watson-Haigh        (publish under Haigh, N.S.)
OCE Post Doctoral Fellow
CSIRO Livestock Industries
J M Rendel Laboratory
Rockhampton
QLD 4701                              Tel: +61 (0)7 4923 8121
Australia                             Fax: +61 (0)7 4923 8222
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In reply to Advice on Splitting Large Distributions in CPAN by nathanhaigh

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