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A wishlist for CPAN

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Jeremiah C. Foster

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Mar 4, 2008, 5:50:11 AM3/4/08
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Hello!

What if we could have a "wishlist" that we could present to CPAN module
authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those
who package CPAN modules for debian?

I can think of some things, like "sane versioning" that gregor mentioned,
this would clearly help in crafting an effective watch file. Are there other
things we would like to see?

If you can help me create a list I can use that to present at the Perl QA
workshop in Oslo and perhaps we can implement some of them, or get them
at least to be considered by upstream.

Best regards,

Jeremiah


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Damyan Ivanov

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Mar 4, 2008, 6:00:17 AM3/4/08
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-=| Jeremiah C. Foster, Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 11:50:32AM +0100 |=-

> I can think of some things, like "sane versioning" that gregor mentioned,
> this would clearly help in crafting an effective watch file. Are there other
> things we would like to see?

Copyrights/licensing.

Ideally each and every file in given CPAN distribution should have
clearly stated copyright and license information. AUTHORS/CHANGES (if
properly filled) can be used as a source of guessing, but I think
guessing about legal stuff is nothing we want daily.

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Russ Allbery

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Mar 4, 2008, 2:30:11 PM3/4/08
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"Jeremiah C. Foster" <jere...@jeremiahfoster.com> writes:

> What if we could have a "wishlist" that we could present to CPAN module
> authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those
> who package CPAN modules for debian?
>
> I can think of some things, like "sane versioning" that gregor
> mentioned, this would clearly help in crafting an effective watch
> file. Are there other things we would like to see?

* No interactive prompting from Makefile.PL or other parts of the build
system without corresponding (and documented!) ways of setting the same
parameters automatically.

* Please use one of the standard Perl module build packages if at all
possible. (This probably goes without saying.)

* POD documentation for modules should be structured as described in the
pod2man man page. In particular, the NAME section and its content is
mandatory. Otherwise, one doesn't get a valid man page.

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Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

gregor herrmann

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Mar 4, 2008, 5:40:15 PM3/4/08
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On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:22:36 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:

> * No interactive prompting from Makefile.PL or other parts of the build
> system without corresponding (and documented!) ways of setting the same
> parameters automatically.

* Similar: no network access needed for building and testing (or an
easy and documented way to turn network tests off).

* Please don't ship generated Makefiles etc.

* Don't use conditions in tests that test for the existence of author
specic files or settings (" unless -d '.svn'" or "unless $username eq
'timbo'")

Cheers,
gregor

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Russ Allbery

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Mar 4, 2008, 5:50:06 PM3/4/08
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gregor herrmann <gregor...@comodo.priv.at> writes:

> * Don't use conditions in tests that test for the existence of author
> specic files or settings (" unless -d '.svn'" or "unless $username eq
> 'timbo'")

Specifically, don't do this unless that's being used as a criteria for
skipping a test that's really meaningless outside of the author's
environment. (I do have a few tests in modules that depend on local
infrastructure to run and hence are skipped if they're not run by me.)

Gunnar Wolf

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Mar 5, 2008, 1:30:24 PM3/5/08
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Jeremiah C. Foster dijo [Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 11:50:32AM +0100]:

> Hello!
>
> What if we could have a "wishlist" that we could present to CPAN module
> authors? What would that contain? What would make life easier for those
> who package CPAN modules for debian?
>
> I can think of some things, like "sane versioning" that gregor mentioned,
> this would clearly help in crafting an effective watch file. Are there other
> things we would like to see?

Make sure your POD documentation makes sense when translated with
pod2man. I went several times, i.e., over all of PDF::API2's manpages
because they used "=head1 PDF::API2::Some::Thing" instead of "=head1 NAME".
Those bugs take a _lot_ of time to properly patch!

POD is not just to be used by perldoc.

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