NEILB's Blog

One third of CPAN distributions (33.1%) have a github repository, but which distributions are they, and are distributions more likely to have a repo if they're further up the CPAN River? This is a quick post to record the stats for future comparison.

As a CPAN distribution moves up the river it needs to become more reliable, as by definition more distributions are relying on it. In this post I propose a simple metric for "suitability for depending on", which is essentially a water quality metric for the CPAN River.

If you release a module to CPAN, and are hopeful that other modules on CPAN might use it, then it's good practice to specify the minimum version of Perl required to run your module. The other way of thinking about it: what's the oldest version of Perl your module supports? Here I'll discuss why you should do this, and how.

I went to the London Perl Workshop yesterday. Lots of good talks and also a chance to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. Thanks to all the organisers and volunteers (and speakers!) who helped make it such a worthwhile day.

This is the start of a catalogue of the different files and directories you might come across in CPAN distributions: what they're for and how they're used. During the PRC I've had emails from a few people who didn't know what to do with the distribution they'd been assigned, which prompted this.

Following on from my previous post on CPAN terminology, this one focusses on the model and terminology related to dependencies: the modules that your dist uses, and the other CPAN distributions that use yours.

This is a collection of terms related to CPAN and CPAN distributions. I've often looked for such a thing, wanting to link from it in blog posts and the like, or somewhere to direct people to (such as PRC participants).

There's been quite a bit of discussion this week about Perl 5.6, and how much effort people should put into their ensuring their CPAN distributions work with 5.6. The question I haven't seen asked: is anyone still using 5.6 in production?

When using someone else's module in our CPAN modules, most of us don't bother to specify a minimum version of that module. If no-one else is using your module you can get away with that. But as your distribution moves up the CPAN River, you should start paying attention, and specify minimum versions both in the code and your distribution's metadata.

A bit later than usual, this is a quick look at the number of CPAN pull requests that were done in May 2015. A noticeable drop from previous months, but still more than in any month before 2015. Just.