On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Smylers <smyl...@stripey.com> wrote: > Most of the information on that page is likely to be bewildering or > irrelevant to the user who's just stumbled upon the site, but it does > say mention that it's "a way to provide multi-platform testing for > modules" and provides "valuable feedback for users".
Yes, well, I agree with you there. Care to draft some replacement text and pitch it to Barbie? I believe the source is here: http://github.com/barbie/cpan-www-testers/tree/master Maybe we need some simple, web 2.0 interface like Adam did for Strawberry Perl and explain CPAN Testers in 140 characters or less. :-) > Anyway, our sys-admin could easily end up deciding that Cpan Testers > results are clearly wrong, and think less of Cpan Testers or Cpan or > Perl or the Perl Community. Maybe in future when evaluating software > he'll be more inclined to choose something written in another language, > so he doesn't have to deal with the trials of Cpan again. So instead your sysadmin will go choose something in a language that doesn't have a code library repository of the breadth and depth of CPAN, one which doesn't bother to encourage a culture of testing, and doesn't bother to collect test results at all? Because it's simpler and less confusing than the 'trials' of CPAN? That doesn't say much for the quality of your sysadmin, does it? On the other hand, you're right -- people will often choose the lesser path because it doesn't require them to think as much. > And that's fair enough. But possibly there are those in the Perl > community who think this perception is unfortunate and are interested in > doing something about it, making the Perl World a friendlier or more > helpful place. Seen Alias's rants about Perl websites? Or the Iron Man blogging competition? I'm totally with you on the broad point, just not on the cheap shot at CPAN Testers. Do you have any idea how long it took to get the CPAN Testers websites handed over at all? (Years) Or how many flamewars there have been on how to make CPAN Testers less annoying? (At least a couple a year, though less since we stopped emailing authors directly.) Or how much work is being done to improve the quality and utility of the reports? Or to switch away from email as a transport mechanism? It's not that we don't know that parts of it suck, it's just that we're working on other things. Rant aside -- please do send patches if you think you can make it better. We could use all the help we can get. > [*1] Though actually is there anything stopping somebody from checking > whether modules actuall install and sending FAIL results to Cpan Testers > for those that didn't? Surely they'd just display like other FAILs. > Yes that'd be more involved than what current testers are doing, but I > don't think it means it couldn't be done by somebody. Nothing is there to stop it, though I'd personally oppose it and push to drop those reports on the floor so it doesn't confuse matters. One of the reasons that we decided to have Build/make failures become UNKNOWN was to help authors distinguish them from test FAIL reports. I've supported expanding the grades in the past and would do so again if someone were to argue for an INSTALLFAIL grade or equilvalent for the case you describe. -- David
