On Mon, Mar 07, 2011 at 12:10:26PM -0800, Marvin Humphrey wrote: > On Mon, Mar 07, 2011 at 01:34:04PM -0600, John M. Gamble wrote: > > Well ... this raises a question. Whither Module::Build? > > How about maintenance mode? Does Module::Build really need to be aggressively > developed? > > Module::Build provides a fantastic improvement over MakeMaker: it allows us to > write build actions in pure Perl. And it has matured into a build system with > a lot of nice features. > > M::B wasn't core and had some bugs at first, so I could understand when people > got impatient over it back in 2006. But it's been distributed with core Perl > for years now and it's pretty darn stable. > > In a quick glance at Dist::Zilla, I see that it does stuff like incorporate > POD::Weaver so that they can write their docs in a new language that extends > POD - <http://dzil.org/tutorial/writing-docs.html>. That's cool, and I love > to see people pushing the envelope, but it's not a feature I'd want to > use. I just want to write my elaborate build scripts in Perl rather than > Make. > > If nobody steps up and wants to maintain M::B within the confines of its > current API, does it make sense to declare victory and remove it from > dual-life status?
I don't think I'd use the word "victory" for that. "remove it from dual-life status is ambiguous" We've now got the core perl laid out in git such that modules in cpan/ are dual life, and the master repository is somewhere else generally we're not tracking that repository. We're merging CPAN releases modules in dist/ are dual life, the core git repository is master, but someone is prepared to (and does) make release of them to CPAN, which will (to some degree) support earlier versions of perl modules in ext/ are only shipped with the core perl A side effect of being in ext/ is that you can only upgrade a module there by upgrading your entire perl. Now, if no-one wants to volunteer to actually make CPAN releases of Module::Build, then a: in the short term cpan/Module-Build is going to be 100% stable b: in the medium term, if upstream is dead, and there are bugs to be fixed, it will be moved to signify that the perl core is upstream If *no-one* wants to volunteer to make the CPAN releases, then logically it will be moved to ext/ At which point, if you hit a bug in Module::Build, your next fix comes by upgrading perl. I'm sure this is going to make some people scream. Sorry folks, that's how it is. Volunteer, find someone to volunteer, pay someone to "volunteer", or shut up. Nicholas Clark
