--Apple-Mail-14-857294617 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset -ASCII; formatðïwed On Sunday, January 26, 2003, at 02:37 AM, David Garamond wrote: > i'm not saying that we should copycat CPAN. but when people come to > this group from time to time asking about a CPAN-like beast, that > ought to make us think about what features CPAN has that RAA currently > doesn't. and can we make a better cpan than CPAN (just like ruby is in > many aspects a better Perl than perl). I have to say that, for me as someone who remembers perl 4 and is just starting Ruby, the big thing missing to make RAA an acceptable alternative to CPAN is not a website, but the CPAN module. I NEVER use the perl CPAN ftp-site/web-page - I always access it through the module. If someone built something equivalent to CPAN.pm, hopefully with a less kludgy interface, I think it would go a long way. Also, a not on categories: when I use the CPAN shell, I don't care about categories, because my workflow is: > i /FTP/ ... blah ... ... blah ... > readme DEC::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... blah ... ... blah ... > install Net::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... blah ... # OOPS > install Dec::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... random compiler errors ... ... random attempts to install the latest perl ... ... random additional modules required ... > force install Dec::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... blah ... ... blah ... > quit The point is that I NEVER look at what category a module's in because I always use the search function. I suspect that most people do the same - CPAN's just too big and has too much junk to use it otherwise. If Ruby wants to build a better CPAN, I would suggest a few things: 1 - A better interface. The CPAN shell is kludgy at best. 2 - Better dependency handling and management. With a good interface, I should be able to choose where to get the modules I need. 3 - Easy ways to get data into the directory. I think that sourceforge might be a better model than CPAN - CPAN followed the lead of CTAN, which was built in the days when FTP was king. We have the ability, today, to build something more interesting, more web-based, and more database-oriented. I think we should focus on that rather than on category listings - especially since the categories always seem to be more or less inappropriate anyway. Patrick --Apple-Mail-14-857294617 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/enriched; charset -ASCII On Sunday, January 26, 2003, at 02:37 AM, David Garamond wrote: <excerpt><fixed>i'm not saying that we should copycat CPAN. but when people come to this group from time to time asking about a CPAN-like beast, that ought to make us think about what features CPAN has that RAA currently doesn't. and can we make a better cpan than CPAN (just like ruby is in many aspects a better Perl than perl).</fixed> </excerpt> I have to say that, for me as someone who remembers perl 4 and is just starting Ruby, the big thing missing to make RAA an acceptable alternative to CPAN is not a website, but the CPAN module. I NEVER use the perl CPAN ftp-site/web-page - I always access it through the module. If someone built something equivalent to CPAN.pm, hopefully with a less kludgy interface, I think it would go a long way. Also, a not on categories: when I use the CPAN shell, I don't care about categories, because my workflow is: > i /FTP/ ... blah ... ... blah ... > readme DEC::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... blah ... ... blah ... > install Net::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... blah ... # OOPS > install Dec::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... random compiler errors ... ... random attempts to install the latest perl ... ... random additional modules required ... > force install Dec::FTP::OverDecnet::Perl ... blah ... ... blah ... > quit The point is that I NEVER look at what category a module's in because I always use the search function. I suspect that most people do the same - CPAN's just too big and has too much junk to use it otherwise. If Ruby wants to build a better CPAN, I would suggest a few things: 1 - A better interface. The CPAN shell is kludgy at best. 2 - Better dependency handling and management. With a good interface, I should be able to choose where to get the modules I need. 3 - Easy ways to get data into the directory. I think that sourceforge might be a better model than CPAN - CPAN followed the lead of CTAN, which was built in the days when FTP was king. We have the ability, today, to build something more interesting, more web-based, and more database-oriented. I think we should focus on that rather than on category listings - especially since the categories always seem to be more or less inappropriate anyway. Patrick --Apple-Mail-14-857294617--