On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 08:56:04AM -0600, Curtis Jewell wrote: > wrote: > > On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Tim Bunce <tim.bu...@pobox.com> wrote: > > >>On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 09:59:32PM -0400, Jesse Vincent wrote:>> Forcing > > >>an extension makes all sorts of tools that previously "just > > >> worked" with a tarball suddenly start to fail. > > > > We've dealt with it in the past. > > > > However, I'm inclined to think that going that way means an entirely > > new client that is designed for .cpan files. This is more akin to > > PPM, except non binary. The question in my mind is what this gains us > > beyond "double-clickability" for Windows. (Which is a non-trivial > > benefit -- e.g. see a *.cpan distribution on a web page, click it to > > install in Strawberry Perl). It might let us rethink some of the > > painful conventions of distribution tarballs today. > > > > (Idea suddenly came to mind. If not workable, just take apart and > reassemble until it does work.) > > Why don't we make the .cpan/.c6pan file (.c6pan) a JSON file, generated > by PAUSE once the tarball is uploaded, with whatever information is > required (a reference to the tarball, what version of perl is required, > etc.) in order, when that file is passed to a CPAN client, to download > and install the tarball.
This is essentially how PPM works. The PPD file points to a tarball, via an extension to the OSD file format. It would be easier to generate an installation configuration file, supported by a new installer that can cope with the double-click install of several OSes these days, than changing the package archive format. Changing PAUSE/CPAN to require a new package archive is likely to have a detrimental effect on Perl as a whole, as older installers will then be unable to install anything new. Upgrading is not always easy for some organisations (I know of one still using 5.6.1!). Mind you, if it means adding even more files to the filesystem, we come back to the discussion about rsync :( Cheers, Barbie. -- Birmingham Perl Mongers <http://birmingham.pm.org> Memoirs Of A Roadie <http://barbie.missbarbell.co.uk> CPAN Testers Blog <http://blog.cpantesters.org> YAPC Conference Surveys <http://yapc-surveys.org>
