Re: what to do with dead camels ?
* Gabor Szabo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [03 Aug 2003 18:31]: [...] If I encounter such a module what should I suggest to the author ? Ask the author to update or delete. Or offer to take over maintenance. Your problems begin when you can't *find* the author. Some of the older dists that bundle in other modules would benefit from having META.yml files with the private keyword (which needs some docs). cheers, -- Iain.
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
Iain 'Spoon' Truskett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ask the author to update or delete. Or offer to take over maintenance. Your problems begin when you can't *find* the author. Maybe a periodic 'ping' to module maintainers (e.g., once every two or three months) and mark maintainers (and their modules) that miss a couple of pings. Modules marked as such could be returned last by the search engines, and be clearly marked as being of 'undetermined' status. -- Johan
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, Johan Vromans wrote: Maybe a periodic 'ping' to module maintainers (e.g., once every two or three months) and mark maintainers (and their modules) that miss a couple of pings. Modules marked as such could be returned last by the search engines, and be clearly marked as being of 'undetermined' status. That'd be awesome. -- /chris The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. -Robert Maynard Hutchins, educator (1899-1977)
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
On Sunday 03 August 2003 17:45, Andy Lester wrote:
There's a distro on CPAN now called lcwa that I would love to see
disappear. It's from 1997 and it's one of those distros that
included all its necessary parts rather than rely on depencies.
Unfortunately, those parts are 6 years out of date, but come up in
searches on the modules.
Do a search on search.cpan.org for HTTP::Response, a pretty common
module. The first hit that comes up is the one from lcwa, and if
you're not paying attention to the distro name (or you're a relative
newbie who doesn't realize he needs to), you're going to be looking
at 6-year-old docs for the module.
Try Test::More, it's true home is Test::Simple but that's 5th on the list.
Can I suggest a change to the sorting algorithm for search.cpan.org when
searching for a module or for docs
@sorted_distros = sort {
$a-oldest_version-release_date =
$b-oldest_version-release_date
} all_distros_containing(Module::Name);
Because chances are that if Distro::A includes a piece of Distro::B then
Distro::B probably predates Distro::A. Of course that's not necessarily true,
it's quite possible but that should be comparitively rare.
I think it doesn't fully solve the problem for Test::More but it might for
some others
F
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
It turns out that in June there were 4000+ hits on modules in the could you please teach me how do you look such statistic? Is it available for public? Andy, why don't you talk with acme about getting such information added to the CPANTS metrics... clearly it is something that authors want to know. -- Sam Vilain, [EMAIL PROTECTED] The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. KARL MARX
RE: what to do with dead camels ?
At 10:34 AM +0400 8/4/03, Konovalov, Vadim wrote: I wouldn't mind there being something in PAUSE that says you have to touch the module once a year. I don't mean worthless updates, like but how do you distinguish cases when module does not need updates, just because it does not needs to be updated (still in a good shape)? one-year cycle is not long enough. There would be something in PAUSE that would allow the author to say I'm still here. The module itself need not change. It would be like the UNIX touch command. xoxo, Andy -- Andy Lester = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = www.petdance.com = AIM:petdance
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
Andy, why don't you talk with acme about getting such information added to the CPANTS metrics... clearly it is something that authors want to know. Oh, I have. It was talking with Leon that this project first came into being. My goal isn't to have an ongoing stats collection process like he's got, but a one-time list capture. xoa -- Andy Lester = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = www.petdance.com = AIM:petdance
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
Try Test::More, it's true home is Test::Simple but that's 5th on the list. Understood. HTTP::Response was just an example, and one that was annoying me because of the skewing of the stats I was collecting... -- Andy Lester = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = www.petdance.com = AIM:petdance
Re: what to do with dead camels ? work on CPANTS
Hello, As long as we are discussing ways to improve the quality of CPAN, this seems like a good time to mention CPANTS. While addresses Dead Camels does patch a hole in CPAN, Schwern's CPANTS proposal provides a complete solution for quality control for CPAN. Here's a link to more information about it: http://use.perl.org/~markjugg/journal/13121 This project is already underway and in its early stages in the form of Module::CPANTS. Mark -- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark StosbergPrincipal Developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Summersault, LLC 765-939-9301 ext 202 database driven websites . . . . . http://www.summersault.com/ . . . . . . . .
Re: what to do with dead camels ?
On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 10:24:29PM +0200, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: This could be as simple as sending an email once a month to the CPAN id's mail address and set a flag when it has bounced. Maybe once a year you would like the author to actually reply to make sure the mail isn't going into some bitbucket. Maybe something that Siesta can do as soon as it knows how to VERP... ;-) Yes, but... How much do you hate mailman for all those here is a reminder of your mailing list memberships messages? Happy mailman day? Or curse mailman day? I can see this as a really good way to piss people off. Anyway, it's moot point as you already know that the person assigned to VERP takes an awfully long time to getting a round tuit, so it's unlikely to be finished soon ( http://siesta.unixbeard.net/svn/trunk/siesta/TODO ) Nicholas Clark
What search.cpan.org PAUSE produce (Fork from: what to do with dead camels?)
May I begin a separate thread for a line of discussion coming up under the dead camels? The discussion suggests we should also look at (1) what search.cpan.org comes up with in searching for modules; and (2) what links PAUSE builds when it extracts POD from an uploaded module. I'm going to present empirical observations only; it would be premature to make suggestions for changes until we heard from more contributors. On Sunday 03 August 2003 17:45, Andy Lester wrote: Do a search on search.cpan.org for HTTP::Response, a pretty common module. The first hit that comes up is the one from lcwa, and if you're not paying attention to the distro name (or you're a relative newbie who doesn't realize he needs to), you're going to be looking at 6-year-old docs for the module. Today, Fergal Daly [EMAIL PROTECTED] added: Try Test::More, it's true home is Test::Simple but that's 5th on the list. Issue 1: What search.cpan.org comes up with when searching for a module. Tonight I searched for Test::More via each of search.cpan.org's 4 search modes. I was looking to see where MSCHWERN's Test::More appeared in each of the modes. Results: Searching via All: 1st distro appearing is Test::More as part of Palm-Progect-2.0.1 by Michael Graham. Schwern's Test::More appears 4th on list. Note: In recent weeks 1st distro appearing under this search was Test::More as part of parrot-0.0.010 by Steve A Fink. Tonight, this distro is 2nd on list. Searching via Modules: 1st distro appearing is Test::More as part of CPAN-1.76 by Andreas J Konig. Schwern's Test::More does not come up at all among 471 entries found. Searching via Distributions: Test::More does not come up at all Searching via Authors: Schwern does not come up; 1st author listed is Huascar Tejeda (HUSOFT) -- who has no modules listed at all, so it's not clear why the search engine came up with him. Issue 2: Which links PAUSE builds when an author uploads a module whose POD contains links? This issue came up when I was studying Fergal's POD for his Test::Deep module (http://search.cpan.org/author/FDALY/Test-Deep-0.06/lib/Test/Deep.pod#SEE_AL SO). The POD appears simply as: LTest::More PAUSE links this to the version of Test::More described above as part of parrot-0.0.010 by Steve A Fink. I suspect that on the date this distro was uploaded, Steve's Test::More was still the 1st appearing when searching via All and that this may be why PAUSE linked to this version, when Fergal would probably have preferred the link be to Schwern's version. Do others observe similar phenomena? Is it problematic for you? Jim Keenan
