Hello CPAN testers. I've started a discussion in the module-authors list, and was told that this is the right place for it. Here is the original discussion: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.module-authors/2012/11/msg9844.html
The problem is that that as modules use more and more dependencies, the probability of successfully installing a modules is declining fast. because a lot of modules (even some of the very basic once) have a small percentage of test failure, and these are adding up. I wouldn't have brought that up if not for the fact that recently, when I install a new module, I almost expect to see a dependency fail and move to debug mode. David Cantrell told me that test that fail because an dependency failed to install are discarded. this is not a test failure, and so no need to report it. the module didn't fail. It *correctly* didn't install. I disagree. A failure to install is a bug. as a module user I don't really care why it failed to install - it is as unusable to me as any other problem. as a module author, I would like to know if my dependencies are not dependable. Of course, visiting the deps site can show this information, but if the author isn't aware of the problem, why would he visit it? Of course, I can decide that I don't care. similar to one of my modules that fail on Perl 5.6, and I don't really care about that version, so I ignored them. It was said in the original discussion that the failure, if marked as one, should be flagged differently then the regular pass / fail / na / unknown. depfail was suggested. And finally, if a module author upload a new version, and this new version have test failure, I think that it is possible to notify the authors of modules that depend on it without spamming them, but it is really tricky. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the CPAN testers reports. Shmuel Fomberg.
