To get things into 5.12, we have to make a decision about the cpan(1) script pretty soon so it gets into CPAN.pm in time to get into 5.12.
I recently changed the way I develop the cpan(1) script. I turned cpan(1) into a wrapper for the module named App::Cpan, and I've been adding new features and adjusting other ones. I add new features in a development version and use the development version in my own work for awhile before I release it to CPAN (usually). Previously, Andreas (or somebody) would grab the cpan file out of my old repo and just drop it into the CPAN.pm distro. That mostly worked. To go forward, I care about two things, mostly: 1. Ensuring that the stuff CPAN workers pulls from me is ready to be in the perl core. 2. That cpan(1) isn't too much older than the HEAD of App::Cpan in terms of stable features. Here's how I think it could work: 1. The cpan-workers don't pull the latest version from me, since I might have added experimental features. 2. I tag some release which I'm confident in, and we get a lot of people to play with that version in everyday situations. 3. The CPAN.pm pumpking graps my lib/Cpan.pm and script/cpan from the tagged commit and puts those in the right place for CPAN.pm. That's probably just lib/App/Cpan.pm and the same place cpan(1) has always been. 4. Alternatively, I could put them in the right place and send pull requests. That's probably the least amount of work for everyone. I don't think we need to know which version to pull from me immeidately, but I will spend some time looking at the versions to see where we should cut off development. -- brian d foy <brian.d....@gmail.com>
