Problem with CPAN and module version numbers

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to install the Smart::Comments module with the CPAN shell, but the only version the shell finds is 0.01 by Autrijus Tang. Searching on search.cpan.org shows a 1.01 version by Damian Conway. Any idea why my CPAN shell is blissfully ignorant of this?

I've tried removing the Metadata file from my cpan build directory so that a fresh copy of 01mailrc.txt.gz, 02packages.details.txt.gz, and 03modlist.data.gz are downloaded. I've also tried emptying my urllist and adding different cpan mirrors (after deleteing the Metadata file and restarting the shell), but no matter what, the shell thinks the only version of that package is 0.01.

cpan> m /Smart::Comment/
Module id = Smart::Comments
    CPAN_USERID  AUTRIJUS (Autrijus Tang <autrijus@autrijus.org>)
    CPAN_VERSION 0.01
    CPAN_FILE    A/AU/AUTRIJUS/Smart-Comments-0.01.tar.gz
    INST_FILE    (not installed)
[download]

And, finally, I did an 'install Bundle::CPAN' (followed by retrying all of the above), to make sure I had all the latest CPAN modules. Still no luck.

2005-10-31 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'Semi-stupid CPAN question'

Comment on Problem with CPAN and module version numbers Download Code

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Re: Problem with CPAN and module version numbers by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Oct 30, 2005 at 13:55 UTC
Try running the following command in the CPAN shell: `cpan> install D/DC/DCONWAY/Smart-Comment-1.01.tar.gz` [download] That's happened to one of my modules before - AUTRIJUS hasn't made DCONWAY a co-maintainer yet. Email both of them and let them know what's going on. My criteria for good software: Does it work? Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Problem with CPAN and module version numbers by TheDamian (Vicar) on Oct 30, 2005 at 15:45 UTC
Actually, the problem is that Smart::Comments uses the (soon-to-be-core) version.pm module for its versioning, but the PAUSE indexer is not yet able to understand these new-style version numbers. So CPAN.pm ignores the more recent upload and finds only Autrijus' original release. `:-(` Damian	[reply]
Re^3: Problem with CPAN and module version numbers by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Oct 30, 2005 at 20:24 UTC
The latest Module::Build release has the same problem - it treats '0.0.2' as a string, not a number, so you get a lot of "'0.0.2' is not a number in ..." warnings. I ran into that when doing work with Contextual::Return. My criteria for good software: Does it work? Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?	[reply]