Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
While I've no objection to building the end-user software to support
multiple repositories, I know that there are certain segments of the
community who are very very keen to keep everything in the one
repository.
After reading the Zen of Comprehensive Archive Networks (ZCAN), I think
there is very good reason for retaining the current infrastructure with
the current, large, set of mirrors. That is not to say that we can't
upgrade the packages and metadata.
I'd agree with them, on the following conditions:
- CPAN accepts packages in Perl5, Perl6, and anything else that runs on
Parrot
"CPAN shall not piggyback another language" -- from ZCAN.
Judging from the ZCAN page, I don't expect that uploading Ruby modules
to CPAN will go well, even if that module can be compiled to Parrot. The
ZCAN page gave good reasons for this.
- Some of the other changes mentioned here get implemented (ie. Larry's
idea of putting binary packages on CPAN as well)
I personally don't care. But some mirrors might object to having their
disk usage go up 5-fold because we decided to include binaries for many
operating systems and CPUs.
The big problem with the multiple repos idea is that, unless each
has a large organisation behind it, they die (witness the DAG RPM repo,
which seemed deadish last time I looked; the packages are still there,
but no updates seemed to be being made). CPAN, because it has a large
enough organisation behind it, has a number of people behind it
empowered with keeping it going. People don't want to have to keep up
with the fashionable repos.
+1
Daniel.
