On Saturday 07 August 2010 15:56:28 Ovid wrote: > ----- Original Message ---- > > > From: Shlomi Fish <shlo...@iglu.org.il> > > > > On Saturday 07 August 2010 00:44:05 Ovid wrote: > > > Laughing at that "active_dev" tag. > > > > What's wrong with it? > > First, my apologies for being so flippant. That was rude of me and I'm > sorry. I just typed what popped into my head without thinking about how it > sounded. > > Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that these tags become popular. > Over time, the majority of CPAN modules are not actively developed because > the authors move on to other languages, other careers, or just forget > about the darned module. They're going to leave the "active_dev" tag > there because they forgot about it, not because it's true. > > I can't tell you how many times I've supplied a complete patch, with tests > and documentation, for a known bug in a module and had absolutely no > response from the author. If I am willing to do all of that work for them > and they ignore it, why on earth would they bother with a new release just > to fix a tag which doesn't alter the module's functionality? They won't. > They're not going to care. Thus, I confidently predict that the CPAN > would become littered with tons of "active_dev" tags which are flat out > lies and thus undermine our confidence in tags in the first place.
There's an easy solution to this problem - have this tag retire after there hasn't been a new release in, say, 6 months. Or maybe we can call it something else. (By retire I mean that search engines, indexers, raters, etc. will ignore it, not that it will be physically removed from the META.yml). > > On a related note, I've not made a new release of Sub::Override in 5 years > because it's complete and apparently correct. Is it actively developed or > not? Maybe I wasn't clear enough in the SPEC, but it wouldn't be "def/active_dev" because it's not constantly enhanced. What I meant by "active_dev" is that the module is constantly enhanced / expanded / etc. > > > > I can't say I've really been paying attention here, but while some > > > tags (requires C compiler) seem like they might be reasonable, other > > > tags such as "black_magic" seem highly subjective. And the > > > "source_filter" tag seems > > > > > > to belong in the "black_magic" category. > > > > Well, tags may be overlapping. But not all "black_magic" modules are > > source filters (e.g: Error.pm which is not a source filter, but is > > black magic.). > > That misses the point. Who defines black_magic? What I see as normal code > (e.g., reaching into a typeglob) is seen as black magic to others. > Well, maybe we need a better tag for that. > I'm not saying this module is a bad idea, but ambiguous/subjective tags > don't seem useful to me. "adopt_me" doesn't seem problematic. However, > maybe I'll use this module and create a "works_on_my_machine" tag :) So far it's not a module - it's just a specification. The code to read the definitive keywords from the META.yml and handle them is not hard to write, but we have to agree on a set of initial definitive tags. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Parody on "The Fountainhead" - http://shlom.in/towtf God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then decided against it because he thought it would be too evil. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .