___
/ _ \
| | | |_ _ ____ ____
| |_| ||\ | | |___
\___/ | \| |___ |___ upon a time, the Perl 5 modules list was an
excellent resource for those seeking to do anything non-core with
Perl. However, it has not kept pace adequately with the needs of the
community.
I propose, what we do about this situation is :
- expand the modules list into a new section of the www.cpan.org
site, by;
- deciding if the current categories are good enough 'in this day
and age'; using the current list as a starting point, go through
each category and decide whether it is a useful grouping any more.
This will ideally also involve individuals with experience with
other languages trawling over the appropriate CPAN equivalents, ie
PEAR, RAA, etc, and providing nice, *brief*, informative reports
on their structure.
We will then hopefully have a half-decent list of categories.
This process should be quick, perhaps reporting back its progress
to the list every few days until there is a general consensus.
- encourage curators to step forward, or groups of curators, for
each category; possibly even create mailing lists for people with
a general interest in the technology in that category; to field
questions about naming for new modules to fit into each category.
These curators must have the power to update the contents of the
relevant portions of the www.cpan.org site.
The idea would be to have each category something like the
http://poop.sourceforge.net/ site - but on a standard template to
lend it more credibility. Ideally with space for user feedback.
I would hesitate to seed the listing of actual modules on the current
long Perl 5 modules list. Factors such as the usage that the module
has seen, whether long standing bugs were ever fixed, whether a better
module has come along since and gained widespread acceptance, etc need
to be taken into consideration. Many popular modules are missing from
the list altogether.
The Phalanx project have a good list too, if much shorter. Such
modules would likely feature as "recommended" in the relevant
sections.
If anyone who knows of any similar re-categorisation efforts (is there
anything useful on PerlMonks perhaps?), now is the time to bring them
forward.
--
Sam Vilain, sam /\T vilain |><>T net, PGP key ID: 0x05B52F13
(include my PGP key ID in personal replies to avoid spam filtering)
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we
were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
W C FIELDS
