Salvador Fandino wrote:
Nigel Horne wrote:
Is there something we can do about unsupported CPAN Modules, for
example HTML::FormatData? That module hasn't been updated since
2005, and it's not because it works and needs no updating, because it
doesn't work. There are plenty of old modules like that out there.
Can we bring pressure to bear on the CPAN maintainers? For example,
if a module results in FAIL or UNKNOWN on at least 50% (choose
another figure if you want) of tested platforms then:
Don't forget that CPAN testers is full of false negatives.
It is designed to handle the most common case where a module is
compiled and tested just running make && make install (or the
Module::Build equivalent) but this is not always the case.
There are modules that have further requirements as 3th party
libraries or software, accessing some network service, X-Window,
having some environment variable set, etc. A module can even use some
foreign build framework as GNU autoconf/automake.
If you look at http://stats.cpantesters.org/wpcent.html with care, you
will see that a relatively high proportion of the modules there are
well maintained but that they have some special requirement that the
testers are not fulfilling.
So, please, don't use the CPAN testers results to generate quality
metrics and even less to take actions based on them.
IMO, the current approach that lets the user explore the raw data in a
nice and friendly way is the right thing to do. Don't go further ;-)
All good points, but you failed to address one issue that I raised, that
of clearly out-of-date, unsupported, and unworking modules such as
HTML::FormatData. Please address that.
- Salva
--
Nigel Horne. Arranger, Adjudicator, Band Trainer, Composer, Tutor, Typesetter.
NJH Music, ICQ#20252325
n...@bandsman.co.uk http://www.bandsman.co.uk
