On Feb 16, 2006, at 3:34 AM, demerphq wrote:
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.
That's true. I don't typically have time to scan perlmonks. Perlmonks is a great site, but for getting things changed in a module or asking questions about rationale, nothing beats contacting the module's authors and/or posting to its mailing list.
Is it so hard to pop by a site where your users congregate and see what they are saying about your stuff?
Yes.
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.)
As I understand it, the reasoning is basically "there are non-compliant distros on CPAN - so we must MAKE them comply!" I'm sorry, but I just disagree. I believe we should *help* them comply.
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?
You want the PathTools distro? You can have it. I only took it because nobody else would. It's a horrible legacy mess and political mess and I would be glad to be rid of it.
Why didn't I "make Cwd install ok on Win32" sooner? Because I don't have an appropriate Win32 machine to test on, I don't understand ANY of the issues that were going on in that bug, and I don't own the code (ExtUtils::Install) that was determined to need the patching. But you know all this, so why are you flaming me about it?
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.
Not really, it still felt like a flame to me. But whatever, I can ignore the tone and try to just see the points.
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.
You mean no core distro should use *just* M::B, right? I see no harm in having both a traditional Makefile.PL and a Build.PL to give users the choice, do you?
In any case, on this Makefile.PL issue: I'm willing to put in an admonition to authors and a y/n button when they try to make a distribution without a Makefile.PL. I think at least 90% of those cases are probably just accidents. But I'm not willing to *force* the author to include a Makefile.PL, whatever force would mean here.
Given that, which is on the surface in conflict with your other desire to get 0.28 released ASAP, would you vote for a) getting this into 0.28, or b) waiting until afterwards?
-Ken
