"Joseph McDonald" <joe / vpop.net> wrote:
>
> > the incentives for maximum world-wide use, and to draw maximum resources
> > into developing "Ruby/CPAN". But (IMHO) the Ruby community would
>
>I want to be in on developing a Ruby CPAN (making RAA better).  I have
>lots of ideas.  Of course the system must be written in ruby.  Here's
>one idea for starters:  each module should get it's own mailing list
>which is archived on the web (using blade technology, or next generation
>blade... whatever those green dwarves are working on. :-). ).  Of course
>the ruby IDE should have some nice hooks into said discussion trees and
>the owner of the module should have root access to the discussions
>if s*he likes.

Key non-obvious concepts I think either were key to the
success of CPAN, or would have made it better.

1. Have a core team managing the namespace, testing, and
   telling people about duplicated functionality.
2. Have a standard tool ("perl -MCPAN -e shell") to interact
   with CPAN.
3. Have the standard installation save important local
   information in a way that module authors can use.
4. Have a standard directory layout decided at installation
   for where things go.
5. Have a standard method of inlined documentation,
   automatic regression tests, etc.
6. Have a standard packaging tool (h2xs) for producing
   modules in a standard format.  (Making the entire
   "make Config", "make", "make test", "make install"
   process standardized across modules.)
7. Have a standard way to check versions, state
   dependencies, and so on.
8. Have a standard tool to check whether you have
   indeed done it right.
9. Have a standard bug reporting mechanism for installed
   modules.

The first 6 CPAN does.  The last two it does not, but Debian
does.  All are very, very good ideas.

Remember that that which is not done automatically is not
done consistently.

Cheers,
Ben

PS I am, of course, taking MD5 checksums as an obvious good
thing to do...
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