Monday, March 22, 2010

Dated CPAN modules need TLC

So lately, I've been trying to help the perl community by fixing modules that have had their RT queue neglected because the author has gone MIA. This requires I take over the module to fix what needs fixing. In order to take over a module, you need to do the following:

1. Open RT tickets about the issues you are having in the appropriate queue.
2. Email the author(s) with as many email addresses as you can determine, cc'ing modules@cpan.org
3. Publicly post that you're looking for the author in a frequented blog source
4. It doesn't hurt to post to perl monks either.

If all of this fails and multiple weeks go by, modules@perl.org will hook you up.

This is summarized from The PAUSE FAQ

I'll be doing this for a few modules over the next few months that have been bothering me because they have one thing or the other out of date. I've also been writing a dependency tracker for my own purposes, using the META.yml files that come with modules. A surprising amount of modules do not have a proper META.yml file.

I've already started this process on a few modules. Where I could contact the authors, I've found them to be helpful in most cases. In some cases, they fix what I had an issue with. In other cases, they just pass the PAUSE baton on to me and I can fix it myself.

1 comment:

  1. You might also want to take a look at the failure counts [1,2] & percentages [3,4] for the CPAN Testers Statistics.

    [1] http://stats.cpantesters.org/wdists.html
    [2] http://stats.cpantesters.org/wdists-recent.html
    [3] http://stats.cpantesters.org/wpcent.html
    [4] http://stats.cpantesters.org/wpcent-recent.html

    I've taken on a few of those, including posting RT tickets :)

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