On Tuesday 02 September 2008 10:48:38 David Golden wrote: > Instead of the annoyance of authors writing "warn $foo and exit 0", > now they'll need to use configure_requires in META.yml to demand an > up-to-date version of Module::Build. And it still won't work on an > older Perl with an older CPAN or CPANPLUS that doesn't know about > configure_requires.
I know the intentions of CPAN Testers are good. I really do. I appreciate that many people have invested a lot of work building the system and submitting reports. I've never intended to slag off volunteer efforts. I may question its efficacy or its approach, but volunteers have my respect and appreciation, and I offer my sincerest apologies to anyone who's felt marginalized or attacked or unappreciated for their contributions. I really believe that it's possible that the project could be useful... ... but every time I see yet another arcane cantrip to add to my projects to work around brokenness in CPAN Testers clients, a little bit more of my motivation to care slips away. I want to believe. I really do. Just tell me how it's good testing policy to subsume detritus to mollify a cranky, picky, and fragile infrastructure and how, after doing so, I can trust that my code actually works where it matters -- not just for CPAN Testers, but for actual users. Maybe CPAN Testers is too easy a target. Maybe the real blame lies elsewhere. All I know is that it's no fun anymore to try to fix the problems I ran into when I first started doing things a decade ago, when the reason those problems never get solved is still the same reason it was a decade ago: it's TOO HARD to upgrade. If it's really the case that we'll never get rid of all of these stupid broken workarounds for people who somehow both want to install new software without having to install new software, then I can think of some thirty-plus CPAN distributions which will shortly need a new maintainer. Maybe it's nostalgia, but does anyone else miss the days when you could upload a new distribution to the CPAN and maybe someday get a couple of "Hey, thanks!" messages, rather than a whole pile of "Your stupid crappy software for jerks is broken, you toad!" messages identifying problems that aren't yours, you can't fix, you can't opt out of, and which have, at best, partial workarounds you can only test by releasing new versions of your distributions containing no functional changes for your actual users? It's partly nostalgia. -- c
