On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 09:12:47PM -0400, Rob Kinyon wrote: : On 10/19/05, Nate Wiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: : > My concern is that we're solving problems that don't really exist in : > real-world Perl usage. Are there really two competing authors of DBI? : > Or, for any product, do two people really try to market "SuperWidget"? : > No, one person just changes to "SuperGadget". And with URI's, one person : > gets "amazon.com". Sorry, name taken. : > : > I think we're actually *encouraging* problems by allowing long, clashing : > names. Pretty soon all DBI modules will have to start with : > : > use DBI:TIMB; : > : > Because "JEFFSTER" decided to upload his DBI (Derivative Binary Index) : > module. : > : > I think it will have the opposite effect of what we're trying to avoid. : : I'm of two minds about this, in large part because I have two : experiences with the current CPAN. : : My first CPAN module was taking over PDF::Template, originally written : by DFERRANCE. Now, it's maintained by RKINYON, soon to be maintained : by RKINYON and STEVAN due to amazing contributions by AUTRIJUS (or : whatever those characters are supposed to be). : : Now, how are authorship-changes going to be handled, particularly in : the face of having two PDF::Templates out there already? Everyone is : disambiguating their modules with PDF::Template-DFERRANCE vs. : PDF::Template-JRANDOM. Now, they cannot upgrade to my latest feature : because that requires changing every place they had hard-coded : DFERRANCE. Or, will the package system map PDF::Template-DFERRANCE to : PDF::Template-RKINYON?
I suspect you just use PDF::Template and have some other way of instructing the library system about your general policy preferences, so that anywhere that uses PDF::Template on your project uses the same one by default. : The second experience is one I'm going through right now. I was adding : a feature to Tree:Simple a few weeks back and realized that it needed : to be gutted to do what I needed it to do. With the encouragement of : the author, I rewrote it completely. My development name for the : distro is "Forest", but I have Tree and Tree::Binary as the packages. : (Yeah, it's a math joke.) : : Except, there's two problems with that - Tree is a TLN (top-level : namespace) with a lot of unrelated distros beneath it. And, Tree is : owned by someone else, but that person hasn't updated Tree in 6 years. : And, Tree::Binary is owned by the same guy who owns Tree::Simple. : : How is that going to work in P6? (For the record, I still haven't : figured out what I'm going to do yet. Check Perlmonks for the SOPW in : a few minutes.) We probably need some meta-information somewhere about which names claim to offer the same interface, and which are just accidental collisions. That part isn't terribly well defined yet. Larry
