To the Illuminated Masters of CPAN and META.yml:
Apparently, my upload of Perl::Dist::Vanilla spuriously indexed
directories that I thought I had listed as "no_index".
On examination, it appears that the META.yml spec says to use a "dir"
entry under "no_index" whereas PAUSE/CPAN/search.cpan.org appears to
honor "directory" (based on the META.yml I see for perl-5.8.8). Compare
to the spec:
http://module-build.sourceforge.net/META-spec-v1.2.html#no_index
I hereby appeal to the Powers That Be (tm) to resolve this inconsistency
for the clarity and benefit of us all. :-)
Some potential options:
(a) Add "directory" as a synonym to the spec and add "dir" as something
that CPAN sites recognize.
(b) Change the spec to "directory" -- if CPAN sites are the only real
user of META.yml no_index, then the pain should be minimal.
(c) Change CPAN sites to follow the spec, despite breaking many
distributions' current indexing.
Of these three, I'd suggest (a) or (b). (a) seems crufty but breaks
nothing. (b) is conceptually cleaner but might break a few things. (c)
seems like a nightmare.
Regardless, I encourage PAUSE admins to better document how CPAN uses
no_index (as it currently points to a missing spec file, no less).
Thank you all very much,
Regards,
David Golden