CPAN Curation

By Neil Bowers (‎NEILB‎) from ThamesValley.pm
Date: Saturday, 12 November 2011 14:35
Duration: 20 minutes
Language: English
Tags: community cpan curation

There are lots of modules on CPAN, and this is generally perceived
to be a Good Thing. The barrier to entry is also relatively low,
which encourages people to upload early versions, which they'll
hopefully get feedback on, and maybe even help.

The downside is that for many tasks you will find multiple modules,
and it's often not clear which is the most appropriate module for
you. Recently I needed code to randomly generate a temporary
password, and discovered 12 CPAN modules which I might use.
TMTOWTDI indeed!

I decided to try a CPAN Curation experiment. Every time I need a
module and find multiple candidates on CPAN, I'll write a review.
I'll submit bugs and where possible patches on the modules I
look at. And I'll keep the reviews up to date as new versions of
modules are released.

In this talk I'll cover experiences so far, the tools I'm working on
to help this process, and how I think the approach could be
extended.