On Friday 27 January 2006 14:43, Tyler MacDonald wrote:
> Part of the problem is that a lot of modules out there are fully
> functional even when a few of their tests fail due to assumptions about the
> environment they are being tested in. Another part is that the ActiveState
> perl package build process ("cpanrun") doesn't behave exactly the same way
> as CPAN::YACSmoke. So, a lot of packages that build successfully for CPAN
> testers don't for ppm.activestate.com (and sometimes, the opposite is
> true).
Indeed, another of the longstanding issues with the AS repository is that AS
rarely reports build and test errors back to module authors. (For errors
where their build system as at fault, I don't mind.)
Yet Luke's idea of promoting PPM (or a similar system) as a binary
installation process has a lot of merit. I hesitate to want to support users
who've installed any of my software without running the tests themselves, but
a system that could install modules as easily as through the CPAN or CPANPLUS
shell without requiring compilation could be very useful.
-- c
