Re: CPAN is getting too big

[Bob Gustafson <bobgus@mcs.com>]

>On Wed, 5 Jan 2000, Nick Ing-Simmons wrote:
>
>> Kurt D . Starsinic <kstar@chapin.edu> writes:
>> >On Wed, Jan 05, 2000 at 01:13:18PM +0100, Johan Vromans wrote:
>> >> This message is intended for CPAN people.
>> >>
>> >> As you may have noticed, the amount of information on CPAN now exceeds
>> >> the 650Mb that fits on a CD-ROM. Since people (like publishers)
>> >> occasionally make CPAN snapshots on CD, we need a way to either split
>> >> or ignore some of the contents.
>> >>
>> >> Before re-inventing wheels, what do you think?
>> >
>> >    rm authors/id/G*AR/perl5.00[45]*.patch.gz
>>
>> Hmm, it is reasonable to extend that to *patch* in general - it
>> is on the CDROM then (presumably) the full .tar.gz version is handy
>> with good bandwidth so there is no need for patches.
>

CPAN is really quite useful as a prototype of the 'school of the future'.

To push that concept further and make CPAN more useful and 'accessible' to
non-experts, perhaps it needs another iteration on automating the download,
build, and install of modules (i.e., RedHat's rpm might be useful as a
model).

Right now, CPAN is heavy on code and a bit light on documentation,
particularly documentation which describes modules to a browsing human -
what does it do, what does it need (Requirements), what is on the ToDo
list, etc.  (Some modules do a great job though).

Modules change (or should change..) and burning a CDROM just provides a
snapshot  in time.  Mailing a CDROM is more efficient than downloading
650MB (about 56 hours of max bandwidth download time on my machine).
Automating the download and application of patches could provide more
up-to-date CPAN images around the world.  BUT, who needs a duplicate copy
spinning on their own hard drive if they can browse and access an improved
CPAN library on the Internet.

Just my 2c worth.

BobG

---

References to:

Nick Ing-Simmons <nik@tiuk.ti.com>
Colin Kuskie <ckuskie@cadence.com>

---

[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index][Thread Index][Top&Search][Original]

---