On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 01:44:16PM -0400, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: > Zefram wrote: > > David Golden wrote: > >> Perl 6 is coming. Some code in Perl 6 is already being uploaded to the > >> CPAN. A new "language" field is an important part of the structure we need > >> to allow Perl 6 to reuse the existing CPAN > > > > We certainly need something in this direction. We should be clear > > that each language has its own namespace for modules.
But does each language have its own namespace? The perl6 namespace is richer "under the covers", what with authorities and the like, but from the simple users perspective of "use Foo;" I think they can be viewed as sharing the same namespace. > > We should also > > have a way to specify language as part of a dependency name, to manage > > cross-language dependencies. Doing those suggests that language could > > be consistently stated in META as part of the module name, rather than > > needing a separate field. > > And what should distributions with a mix of languages do? An important question. There will come a time when distribution authors will likely want to mix perl5 and perl6 code and it's important that the tools enable that. We already have "requires:perl:5.xxx" to express the minimum required perl version. I'm strongly -1 for a Language field that implies a language version. I think it's a distinction we'd regret in the long term. Tim.
