> > Sorry, but paying attention is the author's job. A fail is something  
> > that should be fixed, period, regardless of the number of them.
> 
> According to who?  Who's to say what my job as an author is?

Obviously I should be semantically careful: "job" and "author" are
overloaded words. How about this:

It's a general expectation among users of Perl that module maintainers are
interested in maintaining their modules, and that said maintainers will try
their best to remove any failing tests (that are under their power to do
so).

The parenthetical bit at the end is in response to the broken-CPAN straw
man argument. Obviously (rare) things like that are out of control of the
author, along with bugs in any other dependencies, OS utility, etc.

I recognize that CPAN is a volunteer effort, but it does seem to me there
is a implicit responsibility on the part of the author to maintain the
module going forward, or to pass the baton to someone else. Call it a Best
Practice, if you will. The end-user simply wants the module to work.
Maintainers not paying attention, and the subsequent bitrot that is
appearing on CPAN, is one of Perl's biggest problems at the moment.
Careful attention and responsiveness to CPAN testers and to rt.cpan.org is
the best cure for this.


-- 
Greg Sabino Mullane [EMAIL PROTECTED]
End Point Corporation

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Reply via email to