2011.08.07 in #2Record, 957,044 test reports during July
The CPAN testers are breaking their records every month now and helping CPAN Authors to discover and fix bugs in their modules. Even in Devel::Cover! Barbie who runs the sites provides us with updates, plans and a use-case.
2011.08.19 in #42 talks at YAPC::EU by Barbie
Barbie gave two talks at YAPC::EU: 'Smoking The Onion - Tales of CPAN Testers' and 'Perl Jam - How To Organise A Conference (and live to tell the tale)'. The latter is a book in progress you could help writing.
2011.09.29 in #10CPAN Testers Server Update
Barbie (real name) has been writing about the hardware failure the CPAN Testers server encountered and how he was dealing with it. For several weeks it was mostly hard work but now finally we start to see real results showing up along with some analysis on how he handled some performance issues.
2011.11.04 in #15CPAN Testers Summary - October 2011 - Some Great Reward
In his monthly CPAN Testers report Barbie told us about the e-mail reports that are being sent again, about the updated statistics of the system and that finally they might be able to accept donations.
2012.03.25 in #35Israeli & German Perl Workshop Survey Results
Barbie has published the results of the surveys he ran for both ILPW and GPW. Based on this the two workshops were roughly the same size but the attendees of the German Perl Workshop were older, more experienced in Perl, contribute a lot more to the Perl community and like beer more. I wonder how does that compare to the London Perl Workshop?
2012.03.31 in #36Party In Paris - 2012 QA Hackathon (part 1)
Barbie made some very nice improvement to the CPAN Testers infrastructure. Most notably there is now an API to fetch updates from the database. Eliminating the need to download the whole database which is several Gb.
2012.05.08 in #42CPAN Testers Summary - April 2012 - Pictures At An Exhibition
The CPAN Testers Fund got its first individual donations (hint, you can donate too) and Barbie explains why it *is* important to run the tests during the installation process or how that could be avoided by looking at the data in the CPAN Testers database.
2012.08.26 in #57UsePerl and Other Stories
use.perl.org was the old Perl blogging engine till it got shut down a few years ago. Barbie created a module that would be able to parse the old articles.
2012.11.11 in #68YAPC::Europe 2012 - The Survey Results
Less responses to the survey, but more attendees to the conference. Still getting older but less UK. Read more details in the report Barbie posted.
2013.02.19 in #83CPAN Testers Summary - February 2013 - So
The CPAN Testers infrastructure, maintained by Barbie and the Birmingham Perl Mongers, provide a diverse platform to test every module uploaded to CPAN. Sometime within minutes after the upload. This is the regular monthly report describing the discussions on the mailing list.
2013.03.18 in #87CPAN Testers Summary - March 2013 - Us
While testing might not be exciting for many, I think it is one of the most awesome areas in Perl. I am really glad Barbie and co. keep working on the CPAN Testers infrastructure and he keeps reporting.
2013.07.01 in #102YAPC Conference Surveys Update
Barbie is doing his regular follow-up survey. Unfortunately the response rate was quite low this year.
2013.07.24 in #105YAPC::NA 2013 - The Results Are Out
With every YAPC comes a survey about the audience demographics, the quality of the talks and other things pertaining to the event. The results for YAPC::NA of this year are in, and Barbie shares them.
2013.08.04 in #106Misconceptions & Misunderstandings
What is the difference between CPANTS and CPAN Testers? Who are the CPAN Testers? Why do they report failures? A few weeks ago there was a post complaining about the CPAN Testers (I did not link to it as I don't like posts attacking other people.) Now Barbie, the main person behind the CPAN Testers explains everything you might want to know about CPAN Testers! Well, almost.
2014.05.18 in #147CPAN Testers Summary
Barbie summarizes what happened in the CPAN testing world in April.
2014.05.25 in #148GPW2014 & NLPW2014 Survey results
Ooooh, statistics! Barbie shares the survey results of both the Deutscher and the Nederlandse Perl workshops.
2014.05.26 in #149CPAN Testers on Gittip
Barbie got control over the Twitter account called @cpantesters, and now he has set up a Gittip account as well. By supporting the team you help with the maintenance of the servers and infrastructure of the CPAN Testers.
2014.07.04 in #154New Distributions and Versions
Statistics. Everybody love statistics. Here, Barbie compiled all the first versions of CPAN modules. Unsurprisingly, most modules begin their life with a variation on 1.0 / 0.1 / 0.001. But which one is the most popular? Take a guess, and go find out.
2014.07.05 in #154Find a Tester Revamped
Barbie is tinkering with the cpantester infrastructure. More particularly, he's fine-tuning the reported emails for testers to be more flexible and accurate. Not a massive change, but undubiously a very useful one.
2014.07.06 in #154Announcing the CPAN Testers Admin Site
Barbie announces the launch of a new administrative view of the CPAN Tester data for both testers and module authors.
2015.03.22 in #191A Year of CPAN Uploads
There are some really crazy people out there. For example Barbie, who has been uploading modules to CPAN every day for more than a year now. That's real persistence.
2015.04.01 in #193Uncommon OS Platforms Wanted for Testing
The CPAN Testers would like to see more testing being done on the less common platforms. If you happen to have access to operating systems that are not on the top of the OS/Perl matrix.
2015.05.09 in #198Brian McCauley (1967-2015)
I am saddened to read about the passing of Brian. I met him a few times at YAPCs.
2015.05.10 in #198Montage of Brian
If you have images of Brian McCauley, you can help his wife Sam, to create a montage at his memorial.
2015.08.30 in #214CPAN Testers Site Update & Successor Wanted
CPAN Testers hasn't been very stable for the last 2 weeks; Barbie has posted an updated, but is also looking for one or more people who are interested in taking on CPAN Testers. Barbie's been looking after it for 10 years and says "it is definitely time for some fresh eyes".
2015.08.30 in #215CPAN Testers Site Update & Successor Wanted
Barbie wishes to go no more a testing so late into the night, and is calling for heroic figures to take the testing torch from him. And as this PerlWeekly goes under press, a mysterious knight already seems to have stepped forward.
2015.09.18 in #217CPAN Testers Is Back
CPAN Testers is one of those things that you only truly appreciate the value of when it goes away for a time. Like many CPAN authors, I'm very glad it's back!
2015.09.19 in #217Introducing Doug Bell
Barbie introduces Doug Bell (PREACTION), who not only helped with the recent rebuilding of CPAN Testers, but is going to be taking on Barbie' mantle.
