On 2/16/06, Ken Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Feb 15, 2006, at 8:19 PM, Adam Kennedy wrote: > > > But now I'm just getting annoyed and I doubt I can contribute any > > further to this conversation without repeating myself or resorting to > > outright flaming, so I'll step out here. > > Why do you think these threads keep happening on lists that AREN'T > M::B's list? It's very frustrating for me. If there are problems we > can solve in M::B, please bring them to our attention.
The reasons these discussions happen in other venues besides the MB lists is because the MB lists are moderated and sometimes a post doesnt hit the list for days after it was posted and then isnt responded to for some time. Also, I think that expecting every critical thought about MB to be sent to the lists is unrealistic. People have posted lots of discussion on Perlmonks for instance, but ive rarely/never seen you comment. Is it so hard to pop by a site where your users congregate and see what they are saying about your stuff? I mean we aren't talking about some obscure site with 7 users, we are talking about one of the flagship perl help sites. As an example I stopped hanging out in clpm because I found perlmonks, but i still do the occasional search to see whether any of my modules are being discussed. Not only that but when legitimate concerns have been raised the response has been less than positive. For instance the subject matter of this thread (CPAN distros without Makefile.PL's) has been raised time and time again. With almost every time the exact same message. And we still don't see that Makefile.PL being made mandatory. (And judging from your comments in this thread it seems we shouldnt expect to either.) How long did it take to come up with a patch to make Cwd install ok on Win32? A long time and in the end I wrote it. As soon as you realized that MB couldnt install CWD on win32 you should have a) ditched MB for that project until it worked everywhere, b) fixed MB. I mean seriously, if the author of a project like MB can't get it to work properly on his flagship core distro and leaves it as such doesnt it strike you as a pretty serious issue? Yet you havent released an update to MB in a while because it breaks some feature of CPANPLUS? (With an installed user base a mere fraction that of CPAN?) I think you need to reconsider some of your positions. Making MB built modules work as often as possible is much much more important than adding new features whose appeal is restricted to module authors. Making MB built stuff work on both of the popular OS'es (Linux and Win32) is more important than making it easy for an author to pick which license they are releasing their module. Making feedback as easy and painless as possible is more important than having a spam free mailing list. Monitoring how your module is impacting the marketplace is important, you cant just expect every comment to be emailed directly to you. And telling people that MB is great because its easy to extend while ignoring the fact that most peoples first interaction with MB will be when it fails to work is just counterproductive. Frankly getting your product out the door more often with less changes per release would help. Its time to stop caring about the 10%ers and start worrying about the 90%ers. If you can get an MB out the door that has features and bug fixes that appeal to 90% of your user base then forget about the stuff that you havent got working that only appeals to 10%. The 10% will get over it and probably help you do the work anyway, and the 90% are going to be able to yell a lot louder and in a lot more places than you can respond to. IMO, the MB PR has been awful. Time to fix that. There is no excuse for a module built with MB going on CPAN without a Makefile.PL. MB should provide one automagically if the user hasnt requested it. If people dont need the Makefile.PL then they can ignore it just fine. Its only a few hundred bytes. But if it isnt there then the build is going to fail almost EVERYWHERE. And thats bad. Much much much worse than providing a Makefile.PL that will never be used. And BTW, before anybody tries to skewer me for saying this stuff, consider that I have filed bug reports and patches. Ive gone from just bitching about MB to trying to be constructive and helpful about it. MB is a good project that has gotten a bad name for decisions that were no doubt made with good intent but that have backfired. Its time to start taking these kinds of comments seriously and change the public perception of MB. And respond to the issues raised. I like to add a last point: I realize that you are a volunteer and that you have a life besides Perl. But you have placed yourself as the lynchpin of a number of core functions. If you dont have the time to keep up with that then you need to change your development practices and start distributing your responsibilites. Im not saying you should do this, im just saying that a lack of tuits for stuff like this isnt really a good excuse for something with the profile of MB or Pathtools. BTW, i really hope that this isnt perceived as a flame. Thats not whats its intended to do. Its intended to be thoughtful and constructive critcism with the aim of improving the standing of MB in the community. I hope it acheives its goal. Regards, Yves ps: I'll go out on a limb here and say that MB should NOT be made core until it makes Makefile.PL production mandatory. And until it can install all of the core modules that are built with it on all of the main OS'es that use it. Actually id go even further and say that no core distro should use MB until that distro can be installed on all the main OS'es. -- perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"
