On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 09:42:04AM +0200, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote: > At 09:41 AM 8/5/02 +0800, Stas Bekman wrote: > > >... My point was not to keep around any modules which are of no use to > >anybody else. > > That's my point also. The thing is that once a module (namespace) has been > uploaded to CPAN, it will stay there for eternity. And search.cpan.org > will continue to find it, with a link back to CPAN even when there is > nothing there anymore...
search.cpan only indexes files on the CPAN itself, so if you delete the old distributions, they will drop off of the results and be only available on the unindexed BackPAN. If you upload a 'dummy' distribution, the indexer will pick it up but if you only upload a dist-README, it will not. So, if you would like the distribution to remain in the search engine, delete the old ones from PAUSE and upload one with just a README that points people to the new information. As far as the eternal namespace goes, the only restriction on PAUSE that I'm aware of is that you can never upload a file of the same name twice. Beyond that, you can upload modules in any namespace you like but you won't make many friends if you usurp someone elses namespace. Otherwise, nothing is forever :) e.
