2011.09.27 in #10CPAN modules for spelling out numbers in English
How do you say 117? Is that 'one hundred and seventeen' or is that 'one hundred seventeen'? This is another great in-depth comparison article by Neil Bowers. This time he checked 4 modules on CPAN for the time when you'd like to use letters instead of numbers. It is limited to English. I wonder if there are similar modules in other languages as well?
2011.10.23 in #13CPAN modules for parsing User-Agent strings
Another excellent post by Neil Bowers comparing modules to parse the User-Agent strings passed by browsers to web servers. It sounds like a simple problem but due to the 'interesting' decisions made by the browser authors it became an annoyance. Having so many different solutions to this problem just adds to the confusion so I think it is great Neil compared them and recommended one.
2012.02.08 in #29Module review updates
Neil Bowers is linking to the updated version of his report about defining constants. I really love the comparisons Neil is doing. I am looking forward to the day when his reports will be somehow available on the search interfaces of CPAN. E.g. when a module that he lists is being displayed there could be a link to his article.
2012.07.13 in #51CPAN modules for getting module dependency information
Neil Bowers compares 7 CPAN modules for the above task: CPAN::Dependency, CPAN::FindDependencies, Devel::Dependencies, Module::Dependency, Module::Depends, Module::Depends::Tree, Perl::PrereqScanner.
2012.07.21 in #52CPAN modules for making HTTP requests
Neil Bowers is back with his awesome comparison articles. He compares as many as 20(!) different modules that can handle the simple task of making HTTP requests.
2012.08.26 in #57Forgive me, for I have sinned
While working on his review of modules for getting dependency information, Neil Bowers could not find any that was working the way he wanted. So he uploaded a new one. Now he has a lot more modules to review...
2012.09.18 in #61Testing scripts in your distribution, portably
When dealing with portability, Neil Bowers had to deal with directory separators, and converting relative path to full path on other operating systems as well. Apparently we also have issues with spaced in directory and file names. What about non-ASCII characters in the file path?
2012.09.21 in #61CPAN modules for getting a module's path
Yet another great comparison article by Neil Bowers. This time he covered 14 modules, some of them doing a lot more than just getting the path of a module.
2012.09.29 in #62vworker for Perl or how to finance fixing CPAN modules?
Neil Bowers brought up an idea, that, if I understand it correctly, basically would be a way to allow you to finance the development of features or the fixing of bugs in CPAN modules or other open source Perl projects. I think this is a very good initiative. What do you think? Will you use it?
2012.10.13 in #64CPAN Testers Summary - September 2012 - Listen Like Thieves
Several entries, let me point out two: Brian Cassidy is making progress checking if the Changes file in every distribution is according to the 'standard', and Neil Bowers asked how to get more test reports on 'development releases' of CPAN modules.
2012.12.12 in #73Identifying CPAN distributions you could help out with
Every once in a while people come along various Perl channels, mailing lists and forums and ask what perl project they could be involved. Neil Bowers is now trying to set up some metric that will show which CPAN modules need the most attention. Some metric based on the number of bugs, the age of bugs, the date of most recent release etc. Among the comments you can also find the process, to take over maintainership of a module.
2013.02.24 in #83Perl programmer humour
Do you know that the 'Love' is true in Perl? (So is 'False', but let's be positive here, can we?). Neil Bowers found out about the funny people in Perl community. You can too.
2013.03.05 in #85CPAN modules that (can) load other modules
Sometime you'd want to delay loading module to save on start-up time, or to save on memory footprint, or because you can only decided which modules to load at run time. Or for some other reason. There are plenty of solutions for this problem. Neil Bowers went through quite a few of those and compared them.
2013.03.23 in #87Idea: perl community homepage
Neil Bowers had another idea to create a mash-up of several sources of Perl-related news and integrate them in a single page.
2013.04.15 in #91Parenthesise function calls
Neil Bowers, who moved to his own blogging engine, disliked some code examples I wrote the day before. He might be right with his criticism. How do you like the following code? printf q{'%s'
}, trim $z, right => 0; Would you prefer parentheses around the parameters of trim?
2013.05.06 in #94A review of Markdown modules
Another awesome review by Neil Bowers. (... and his site looks better and better!). Markdown is a simple language, one could say markup language, if it wasn't markdown, that can help you write simple text with a few marks and then turn it into some other format such as HTML. Apparently there are several Perl modules that can handle the Markdown format. Which one is the best?
2013.07.14 in #103Give your modules a good abstract
Every module on CPAN can have a single line 'abstract' that shows up in many places. This is the 'elevator pitch' of the module. The single line most people will see before they decide to further investigate your module or skip it. So Neil Bowers explains how you can make it better so the biggest number of people can benefit from your work. (Or easily decide that this is not what they need.)
2013.07.16 in #104Simple version numbers
Version numbers should be boring. Here is how Neil Bowers recommends to use them.
2013.07.22 in #105Don't take CPAN for granted
Neil Bowers reminds us that CPAN is not an immutable entity that exists independently of everything. It's literally the sum and beating heart of the community, and ultimately what we'll all be able to take out of it is what we all, individually, put in it.
2013.07.24 in #105Adopt a CPAN module
Want to contribute to the Perl ecosystem, but don't have a revolutionary new idea at the moment? Then why not consider adopting a module? Neil Bowers walks us through the typical process to adopt one of those lonely bundles of code.
2013.07.28 in #105Interview with Neil Bowers
He is the author of a few articles comparing CPAN modules. He is a perl programmer who is also the joint owner of a small bootstrapped Perl-based start-up company. YouTube video or downloadable audio in mp3.
2013.07.31 in #106CPAN candidates for adoption
I wanted to do something like this for ages, I am glad Neil Bowers had the same idea and went for it. He created a metric that after some more tweaking will help identify which CPAN modules need some help, maybe even adoption. If you were wondering where could you contribute to Perl, look at the list and try to pick a module from there.
2013.08.07 in #107Marking modules as 'available for adoption'
It is very easy to upload new modules to CPAN and it is not too difficult to take over maintainership of a module, but this usually only happens after a long period of inactivity on that module. How can a module author indicate that she is no longer interested in the maintenance of the module and that she is looking for someone to step in? While there is no special mechanism for this, Neil Bowers explains what is the accepted way to mark a module to be looking for a new maintainer.
2013.08.11 in #107CPAN adoption candidates v3
Neil Bowers released a new scoring method and a new list of top 1000 CPAN distributions that might need adoption.
2013.08.16 in #108Total number of dependencies
It turns out 70% of CPAN distributions aren't used by any other distribution... See more details in the report of Neil Bowers.
2013.08.22 in #109Update on the adoption list - first adoption!
In case you were wondering how can you start contributing to an open source project, or which project to pick, Neil Bowers has updated the list he generates. Check it out as this can help you picking a module for yourself.
2013.08.25 in #109Cooperative module maintenance?
I found four Perl-related 'GitHub organizations' where several people maintain a few Perl modules together. If you know about more organizations, please let me know. If you are looking for a module to contribute to, but you prefer working together with others, then checking out these modules might be better than the list Neil Bowers generates. Or, you could take one of the modules from the list of Neil's and bring it to a Github organization.
2013.09.01 in #110A single namespace per CPAN distribution
Neil Bowers explains why a package uploaded to CPAN should use a single namespace and its subnames only. So if you upload Foo-Bar it should only contain Foo::Bar and modules in Foo::Bar::* and not something like 'Config'. I you need a module for configuration, that should be Foo::Bar::Config.
2013.09.06 in #111Perl 6 isn't Perl
The philosophical nomenclature debate rages on. If it doesn't look like a duck, doesn't sound like a duck and doesn't quack like a duck, does calling it a duck qualifies as foul play? Probably, satorises Neil Bowers.
2013.09.14 in #112Iterating over all dists on CPAN
If you want to research CPAN, you'll soon need to go over all the distributions available there. Neil Bowers has been working on the tool to show the CPAN modules that are good candidates for adoption. Now he shows us how he iterate over all the CPAN distributions using PAUSE::Packages.
2013.10.02 in #115CPAN adoption leaderboard
Neil Bowers list the people who have adopted modules from his list, but really this information should be available on MetaCPAN and in both direction. Listing the heros who adopted modules in one place, but also showing who created the module in the first place and who contributed to it during the years.
2013.10.27 in #118CPAN modules for converting markdown to HTML
Just as I am going to need one, Neil Bowers went over 9 CPAN modules converting Markdown to HTML. I love these comparisons, but it also somehow disturbs me. Frankly in many cases I'd just would like to be told 'use this' and not need to think about it much.
2013.11.30 in #123Including CPAN Testers results in the adoption list
The CPAN adoption list ranks modules how important it would be for you to step-up and volunteer to maintain them. It takes into account several factors, and starting from now, it also includes the test reports collected by the CPAN Testers.
2013.12.31 in #128The CPAN Report 2013
Neil Bowers offers us a CPAN-based retrospective of 2013. Which namespace had the most growth? Which author released the most distributions? How many new modules were born? He presents the shocking answers to all those questions. (warning: seeing the statistics of the most CPAN prolific authors is likely to make you feel like an unredeemable slacker)
2014.01.20 in #131Curating CPAN one dist at a time
Neil Bowers crossed the line. He managed to get a module he has not written by himself to be removed from CPAN. Some of you will highly appreciate this work, others will detest it as killing a sacred cow. What do you think? Would you like to encourage Neil to keep working on this, or do you think there are other, more effective avenues to improve CPAN?
2014.01.23 in #131A UserAgent class or role for an API?
Neil Bowers tells about his journey during which he was contemplating several solution to creating a class in the BambooHR API. Ideas that came up were: Plain code, Lazy builder, Delegation, and Roles.
2014.01.31 in #132CPAN adoption request template
Would you like to adopt a CPAN module but don't know where and how to ask? Neil Bowers explains all of that.
2014.02.01 in #132My first release of WebService::BambooHR
BambooHR is a commercial web-based HR (Human Resources) information system. This package created by Neil Bowers is the Perl module to access their public API.
2014.02.06 in #133Iterating over all CPAN releases
This is mostly for researchers, who, for some strange reason, would like to research the content of ancient distributions uploaded to CPAN.
2014.02.13 in #134Add your gittip id to your MetaCPAN account
Gittip now has a Perl community. If you are a CPAN author, you should consider joining. Here, Neil Bowers shows you how to add a gittip icon to your MetaCPAN account (spoiler: it's super easy).
2014.02.19 in #135Make sure your modules have a compliant abstract
Neil Bowers continues his quest to make CPAN a better place. This time he calls upon the CPAN authors to make sure the one-line abstract they have for their modules is well formatted. (This is another excellent opportunity to get your feet wet if you'd like to contribute to a CPAN module. Help an author fix the tag-line.)
2014.03.11 in #138What happens when you upload to CPAN?
This is the first part of a series in which Neil Bowers tries to explain to himself and to you how the whole CPAN ecosystem works. Do you know what is PAUSE and what is BackPAN?
2014.03.13 in #138How soon do CPAN Testers start testing your releases?
It is only based on data from a single CPAN distribution, but so far it shows that the bulk of the test reports arrive in the first 8 days after the release reaches PAUSE with some reports arriving within the first hour!
2014.04.16 in #143Release often
Maybe releasing a CPAN module every day is crazy, but Neil Bowers puts his hand on something that is extremely difficult to do and very valuable: persistence. He has decided to release a new version of a CPAN module every day, but he also offers a bunch of less involved tasks that us, mere mortals, can stick to. So if you'd like to reach something just make sure you make a step every day. An alternative to this idea came from Eric Johnson recommending to write code every day.
2014.04.23 in #144Fighting CPAN entropy
Neil Bowers is a relentless machine. With a dedication not seen since the T-800 went out of production, he obtains the co-maintainership of CPAN modules to clean up their documentation, refresh their code, and generally give them needed dust-off.
2014.04.29 in #145Introducing CPAN::Releases::Latest
As Neil Bowers is working on the CPAN author's dashboard he is putting the pieces together. This module allows you to iterate over all the recent releases limited by age.
2014.05.12 in #146I broke Perl::MinimumVersion, sorry
There are more than 8000 CPAN modules that depend indirectly on this module. Neil Bowers, the new maintainer released a new version of Perl::MinimumVersion, that broke some of the dependent modules. I think he is way to hard on himself, but the really interesting part is the list of ways he proposes to reduce the chance breaking the chain for other people. If you are a CPAN author, or if you are going to be a CPAN author, then these points can help reducing anxiety.
2014.05.14 in #147The Perl gittip community has 499 members
Neil Bowers draws our attention to the fulgurant growth of the Perl community on Gittip. Spoiler warning: we're now up to 509 members.
2014.05.20 in #148Thank you, Chris Williams (aka BINGOS)
The CPAN testing network could be argue to be the awesome marrow that is one of the prime factors that makes the CPAN skeleton so strong. But, of course, this testing network is not run magically by elves. Neil Bowers takes time to tip his hat to Chris Williams, who reported this month his 20th million test report. Yes, that's two-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero and zero.
2014.05.26 in #148Chris Williams
Chris Williams (aka BINGOS) is another of those elder members of the Perl community. He maintains an impressive number of modules deadling with the testing toolchain, the Windows environment, Dist-Zilla and the asynchronous POE framework. He's also one of the most, if not THE most, active CPAN tester. Neil Bowers points out in an article this month that Chris reported his twentieth million smoke test, an accomplishment that is quite awe-inspiring.
2014.06.27 in #153100 days of CPAN releases
Neil Bowers had this crazy idea of releasing a CPAN module every day. I am really happy that this mostly involved releasing fixes for existing modules. Apparently he now needs help getting his hand on more modules. So if you are a CPAN author who wants to get rid of a module, this might be a good time to contact Neil!
2014.06.30 in #154Use of Dist::Zilla when adopting
Dist::Zilla might be an overkill for small distribution, but using a standard approach by author makes a lot of sense. But how to switch from MakeMaker to Dist::Zilla?
2014.07.01 in #154dzil kwalitee
Using Dist::Zilla to make distributions 'CPANTS clean'
2014.07.11 in #155Community: helping each other
Neil Bowers testify of the synergy between CPAN authors, and how we are more as a group than the sum of our parts.
2014.07.16 in #156A simple function exporter
Neil Bowers is having a look at exporter modules, and to understand the mechanisms involved he has a try at crafting a minimal exporting module from the bottom up.
2014.07.20 in #156CPAN Day - 14th August!
On August 14th, CPAN will be 19 years old. Neil Bowers urges you to do something to celebrate the occasion. Me, I'm considering asking friends to bring individual muffins and build a giant, delicious cake out of them.
2014.07.23 in #157The ghost of CPAN Days past
CPAN day is on 14th August. Last week Neil Bowers urged us to do something special. This time he tell us what happened on that very special day in every one of the last 19 years.
2014.07.24 in #157Writing private functions in Perl
Neil Bowers explains several ways to make functions 'private'. Some are by convention (prefixing the name with an underscore), others are experimental (lexical sub), yet others require additional modules from CPAN (Sub::Private). You have a choice how private do you want the functions to be.
2014.07.27 in #157Give your modules a good abstract
Neil Bowers helps us make our modules more findable by people. In a separate article he also suggests how to write good synopsis for our modules to make it easier to get started.
2014.07.29 in #158Give your module a good SEE ALSO section
To give you further ideas how to improve the documentation of your CPAN modules, Neil Bowers suggests to list the other modules solving similar tasks and explain each one of them in a sentence or two. - IMHO this could be an excellent opportunity for non-authors too, to contribute to CPAN, and the Open Source Perl ecosystem.
2014.08.05 in #159Fix a bug on CPAN Day
It is Neil Bowers again (I really hope he will create a post linking to all of his CPAN-day related posts) showing how the number of bugs on RT are steadily growing (but not even looking at bugs reported elsewhere). More importantly he created a list of the to 20 distributions in terms of open RT tickets. There are some very important modules in that list! Go ahead, you can fix a bug or at least write a test case.
2014.08.15 in #160Try Travis CI with your CPAN distributions
CPANTesters is the bee's knee, but recently we have seen the rise of Travis CI, a general-purpose testing service. Neil Bowers shows us here how to use it for Perl distributions.
2014.08.16 in #160A brief history of CPAN
Neil Bowers regales us with a break-neck recap of the last 20 years of CPAN.
2014.09.21 in #165What is "the Perl community"?
Neil Bowers tries to answer the above question, with drawings of layered onions and radiating suns, but I think there is another question: Why does it matter?
2014.09.25 in #166My first Perl Mongers meeting
This month's meeting of the Thames Valley perl mongers counted one presence in their midst. A young neophyte going by the name of Neil Bowers...
2014.10.05 in #167Creating Module::Loader
Neil Bowers, after reviewing all the available modules that can load other modules have reached the conclusion he needs to create his own. The will the universal standard for loading modules.
2014.10.09 in #168The Hacker News API
Neil Bowers released a Perl interface to the Hacker News API. It's new, it's basic but, and that's the important part, it's there and working; patches will eventually take care of the rest.
2014.10.10 in #177Proposed convention for todo lists on CPAN
Some peeps like to include a TODO list in their CPAN distributions, both as a reminder to oneself and as an inspiration for wannabe-helpers. Neil proposes here a simple Markdown format to standardize the practice.
2014.11.09 in #172The Silver Camel goes to ... Mark Keating
At the London Perl Workshop, Neil Bowers happily reports, Mark Keating was awarded a Silver Camel for his excellent work within the Perl community. Well-deserved and, oh my, that's one heck of a spiffy trophy.
2014.11.29 in #175The 2015 CPAN pull request challenge
If the 24 pull requests in December challenge seems like to dense for you, this one can work. Neil promises to send you a CPAN module every month and you are expected to send a pull-request fixing some issue in that module. One every month in 2015.
2014.12.24 in #179Take the 2015 CPAN Pull Request Challenge
It is still not too late to get to the starting line. In order to encourage cooperation with other CPAN authors, Neil is organizing a little competition: Will you be able to handle it?
2014.12.29 in #180Bring out yer distributions!
Lots of people have signed up to the CPAN challenge Neil announced so he also needs the other part of the equation. Modules that need to be fixed.
2014.12.31 in #180Pull request ideas
If you particiapate in the CPAN challenge of Neil, then you might wonder what kind of improvements could be considered in a module. Don't worry, Neil has already prepared a list of ideas and if you have others, you can comment on his blog.
2014.12.31 in #180Pull request etiquette
Some ideas how to make sure the pull-request you send has a higher than average chance to get accepted.
2015.01.07 in #181What to do with a CPAN distribution
For the participants of the CPAN PR challenge, Neil reviews what can be done with the distribution that lands in your laps.
2015.01.07 in #181Always do pull requests in branches
Neil discusses the etiquette (and good sense) of making small, well-isolated, easy to manage branches when submitting pull requests.
2015.01.12 in #182More details on the CPAN Pull Request Challenge
A summary of the challenge, how it will work, and information for CPAN authors and participants of the challenge. It's not too late to sign up!
2015.01.25 in #183Ranking CPAN dists for the PR Challenge
For the PR Challenge, Neil had to come up with a way to rank CPAN distributions and figure out which ones are the best candidates for the challenge. He explains here the heuristics he's using to come up with that score.
2015.01.25 in #183The Perl QA Hackathon 2015
"What is the Perl QA HAckathon, and why should I care?" Good questions, and master Bowers provides equally good answers.
2015.01.29 in #184The meaning of MetaCPAN favorites
Some ruminating on what MetaCPAN's favorites mean, some statistics on how they've been bestowed to date, and how they're being factoring into the scoring of dists for the Pull Request Challenge.
2015.02.01 in #184CPAN Pull Requests in January
A first quick analysis on the impact of the Pull Request challenge. In short, a the most CPAN-related pull requests ever, by a comfortable margin.
2015.02.22 in #187CPAN dists not on github
There are several hundred people taking part in the pull request challenge who want to fix your bugs. All you need to do is put your distribution on github, and make sure the repo is listed in the metadata.
2015.03.07 in #189CPAN Pull Requests in February
A few charts showing how many pull requests were done for CPAN distributions in February, and how that compares with previous years, and with last month. TL;DR: much better, not quite as good, respectively.
2015.03.16 in #190The top 10 hosts for CPAN repositories
Where do the repositories of CPAN modules live? Neil crunched the numbers and share the result. Spoiler alert: if GitHub goes down, it won't be pretty.
2015.04.18 in #195Recording DarkPAN dependencies on CPAN
What would make you provide a list of modules you use in your non-cpan project (open source or closed source alike)?
2015.04.27 in #197Increasing the likelihood of a PR merge
The CPAN PR Challenge of Neil has been working quite well and helped Neil to refine his advice on what would constitute a good Pull Request. He points out that if the change is really useful that will make it much more likely to grab the attention of the author and he gives a number of 'best practices' on communicating with the author and making it easier for her/him to integrate the changes.
2015.04.30 in #197Curating old releases on CPAN
What to do with distributions last released in 1995? Should they be removed from CPAN? Updated? Left alone?
2015.05.09 in #198CPAN pull requests in April 2015
This April was the second best month in terms of number of pull-request against CPAN repositories. See the graph for yourself!
2015.05.11 in #198Measuring the cleanliness of the CPAN River
Measuring the impact of a failing test should not include only the relative number of failing reports, but should be weighted with the relative importance of the distribution, the number of other distributions depending on it.
2015.05.18 in #200Build.PL and Makefile.PL considered harmful
Neil suggests that CPAN distributions that have both Makefile.PL and Build.PL mean trouble and one should not have both. (If the generated Makefile.PL is a perfect replacement of the Build.PL then your users really don't need both.) There is even some history lesson in the comments.
2015.06.24 in #205CPAN pull requests in May 2015
Neil shares the numbers for the CPAN pull request challenge in May. The numbers are going down, but not as quickly as one would have thought -- there are still over 50 CPAN elves making contributions for that month, which ain't bad, ain't bad at all.
2015.07.04 in #206Pay attention to versions of upriver dependencies
Just as you need to pay attention to the date on the bottled water you drink, so you won't drink expired water by mistake; you need to pay attention to the version number of the things floating on the water in the river above the place where you let your folks drink from the river.
2015.07.11 in #207You're not too late for the CPAN Pull Request Challenge
We're half-way through the year, but that mean's there's still half a year left, or 6 potential assignments if you join the Pull Request Challenge before the end of July.
2015.07.26 in #209Are you using Perl 5.6 in production?
After seeing all the 5.6 disussion, I was wondering how many people are using Perl 5.6 in production? If you are, please let me know.
2015.08.03 in #211Do something for CPAN Day 2015
CPAN Day is August 16th, and celebrates the date of the first upload to CPAN in 1995. So this coming Sunday marks the 20th anniversary. Why not do something on/for CPAN Day?
2015.08.11 in #212What's your favourite CPAN module?
If you love a CPAN module, clap your hands! Or tell the author about it. Or provide a little "thank you" type of patch. Or blog about it.
2015.08.14 in #212Raise hell, or bugs, on CPAN Day!
Sure, CPAN day is over by now. But let's be honest, raising hell shouldn't be restricted to a single day in the year, now, should it?
2015.09.05 in #215A glossary of CPAN terminology
One of the tricky things when one learns a new language is to pick up its particular lingo. Depending of wether you are in Ruby, Perl, Python, JavaScript, terms like 'modules', 'packages', 'distributions' will have slightly different meanings. Neil provides us here with a killing cheatsheet to what those terms refer to in the CPAN ecosystem.
2015.09.25 in #218CPAN dependencies and the river model
We talk about a module depending on another module, but we actually install distributions that might include more than one modules. Should we list 'core modules' as dependencies?
2015.10.03 in #219CPANtoberfest - CPAN projects for hacktoberfest
Neil draws our attention to Hacktoberfest, a contest where you can get a t-shirt for submitting patches to at least 4 Open Source projects. He also noticed that the official list of suggested Open Source projects is bereft of anything Perlish -- something he couldn't leave unfixed.
2015.10.18 in #221A spotter's guide to CPAN
An almost comprehensive guide to all the file that can appear in a CPAN distribution.
2015.11.16 in #226One more month in the 2015 CPAN PR Challenge
Let's end the year in a bang! If you have started the CPAN PR Challenged at the beginning of the year, and have not followed through, it is the time to do all the remaining tasks. There is no better time than 2 days before the dead-line! Except maybe 1 day before the dead-line.
2015.11.28 in #22724 Pull Requests
It's that time of year again! This is another pull request challenge, but for this one you need to do 24 pull requests in the first 24 days of December. You get to choose the github repositories, and they don't have to be Perl.
2015.12.13 in #229NEILB's report on LPW 2015
My notes on LPW this year, and also encouraging people who've never spoken at a Perl event to consider giving a talk next year.
2015.12.22 in #231Improving the water quality of the CPAN River
Discussion of metrics for indicating how appropriate CPAN distributions are for your CPAN distribution to depend on. I plan to use this as one of the things used to select distributions for the Pull Request Challenge, but also to see whether we improve the overall "water quality" of the River of CPAN in 2016.
2015.12.29 in #232The CPAN Pull Request Challenge for 2016
Hmm, if I understand CPAN PR is back for another year, but this time only distributions of CPAN authors who opt-in will be included. So if you are a CPAN author and you'd like to get Pull Requests, then talk to Neil.
2015.12.30 in #232Which CPAN distributions have a github repo?
It's interesting how Neil and I keep touching the same subjects, but in addition to the simple question stated in the title, Neil also looks at the place of the distribution in the 'CPAN river' or in other words, How the importance of distributions and the availability of GitHub repositories correspond. Surprising.
2016.01.07 in #233Women keynotes speakers for YAPC::EU 2016
Having more women as keynote speakers for YAPC::EU would be very nifty. Neil, bless his heart, goes beyond the mere wishing and draws a list of peeps who would be awesome candidates.
2016.01.20 in #235CPAN distribution kwalitee for River stages
Why do the most commonly reused modules have the highest number of CPANTS failures? Is it their age? Is that the age of their authors? Maybe lack of willingness to change? Is there a specific metric that is a common source of failure or a specific author?
2016.02.05 in #237CPAN Weekly: one module per week, in your inbox
It seems Neil does not have enough fun editing the Perl Weekly once every 3 weeks or so. Nor does he have enough on his plate running the CPAN Pull Request Challenge for a second time, and being in the river cleaning business up to his neck. Now he also wants to run his own weekly newsletter called CPAN Weekly giving you one CPAN module every week. I can only guess that he is looking for more ways to procrastinate... Good luck!
2016.02.08 in #238Announcing the Perl QA Hackathon 2016
The announcement for this year's QA Hackathon, which is being held in Rugby (in the UK), from Thursday 21st April through Sunday 24th April.
2016.02.13 in #238It takes a community to raise a CPAN module
This was my response to Rik's post. I think that rather than show just one person, we should show everyone who's done a release, in the order of whose released most recently.
2016.04.03 in #245The Perl Toolchain: PAUSE and CPAN
Neil has a new series of articles explaining how CPAN works and thanking the sponsors of the QA Hackathon (QAH) at the same time. In this edition he writes about the infrastructure of CPAN and mentions FastMail, the gold sponsor of QAH.
2016.04.07 in #246The Perl Toolchain: developing your module
The second in a series of blog posts about the Perl and CPAN infrastructure. This one covers creating, editing, and testing a CPAN distribution. It was supported by ActiveState, who are a gold sponsor for the QA Hackathon this year.
2016.04.08 in #246Strato are sponsoring the QA Hackathon (again!)
Strato sponsored the QA Hackathon last year, when it was in their home town of Berlin, and they're sponsoring it again this year. They're also looking to hire some German-speaking Perl developers as well.
2016.04.28 in #249The end of modulelist permissions
The module list permissions in PAUSE (the 'm' case in 06perms.txt) have now all been removed, simplifying the permissions model for PAUSE.
2016.05.02 in #249The QA Hackathon 2016 was a great success!
If you only read one blog post about the QAH, it should probably be this one, which tries to give a flavour of what happened.
2016.05.08 in #250QA Hackathon 2016 - a retrospective
A little time has passed, the dust has settled, and Neil takes a last look back on the 2016 edition of the QA Hackaton.
2016.06.29 in #258Learning from other/experienced speakers
I want to encourage more first time speakers, particularly at LPW. As part of that I'm questions of good / experienced speakers. What question should I ask, and of whom?
2016.08.08 in #264Quoted word lists in array refs
Neil came up with an interesting idea for an addition to Perl 5: qa[ red blue green ] that would mean the same as [qw( red blue green )] today.
2016.10.16 in #273Deciding what to talk about
The second of a series of posts, that aim to encourage people who've never given a talk to submit a proposal.
2016.10.23 in #274Give your first talk at the London Perl Workshop
Have you ever given a talk at a conference? If no, then please give one at LPW. If you need help, then Neil would happy to be your LPW talk buddy.
2017.02.02 in #297CPAN Weekly
This week was about Graph::Easy - creating and rendering directed graphs. Don't miss the next edition!
2017.02.07 in #290GitHub topics
Now you can add tags to your GitHub repositories that might make it easier for people to find your project.
2017.03.19 in #295TVPM Tech Talks in Reading, UK
We're having a session of short tech talks at Thames Valley Perl Mongers, next Monday (27th March), if you fancy joining us? Topics are PDF::API2, synchronising databases, custom reports for Netdisco, packaging for Debian, and the River of CPAN.
2017.03.26 in #296CPAN Weekly
This week was about Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX - read XLSX-format spreadsheets. Don't miss the next edition!
2017.03.30 in #297Groups and the Pull Request Challenge
I was so happy with the CV Library team's efforts (team bonding that improves CPAN for all of us!) that I wrote this post to try and encourage more dev groups to join the pull request challenge as a team.
2017.04.02 in #297An introduction to CPAN distribution metadata
The Perl Toolchain Summit is only possible with support from sponsors. To acknowledge our Platinum and Gold sponsors, we'll be doing a series of blog posts about toolchain topics, each thanking one sponsor. This first post, an introduction to distribution metadata files, is brought to you by FastMail.
2017.04.17 in #300The Perl Toolchain Summit Project List
Before the Toolchain Summit starts, the attendees are asked to add their work list to the wiki. Everyone is invited to have a look at the project list, and let us know if there are additional things you want to suggest for inclusion (bug fixes, new features, etc).
2017.04.23 in #300Specifying the type of your CPAN dependencies
The third article in a series about the distribution metadata that you'll find in the META.json file. This article was supported by MaxMind, a gold sponsor for the summit.
2017.05.09 in #303Specifying dependencies for your CPAN distribution
The 4th part of the series explaining how to declare the dependencies using ExtUtils::MakeMaker, Module::Build, App::ModuleBuildTiny, Dist::Zilla, Minilla, cpanfile, and Module::Install.
2017.05.16 in #304Fixing CPAN distributions without a META file
One of the problems with CPAN is releases that don't have a META.yml or META.json file. We want to try and fix these, particularly those that are used by other CPAN distributions.
2017.07.27 in #314CPAN Day is 16th August
Our own Neil Bowers reminds you that CPAN Day is coming up. Why not help celebrate by contributing?
2017.08.09 in #316Ask not what CPAN can do for you
CPAN Day is August 16th. If you can't think of something to do on that day, why not help us fix up distributions that don't have either of META.yml or META.json.
2017.10.01 in #323Help CPAN with Hacktoberfest 2017
Hacktoberfest is an annual event where if you do four pull requests in the month of October you'll get a free t-shirt. Get started now!
2017.10.22 in #326Introducing the PAUSE Operating Model
You might recall there was some mud-sliding around the the ownership of the DBIx::Class namespace. In order to reduce possible future tensions, the PAUSE admins have created a document describing the rules of their operation.
2017.10.27 in #327Purge your old releases from CPAN!
That will free up space on the CPAN server and on the hundreds of mirrors while the old versions will live forever on BackPAN.
2017.11.10 in #329The Great London Perl Bake Off
Do you know how to bake? Are you going to attend London Perl Workshop? If yes, then you might be able to help Neil.
2018.05.24 in #357PAUSE Privacy Policy
The PAUSE admins have added a Privacy Policy to PAUSE and Neil provides an overview.
2018.06.24 in #361COED:ETHICS 2018
A one-day conference on ethics for developers and technologists in London on July 13th. A few Perl-related companies are also among the sponsors.
2018.06.25 in #361The history of CPAN
While trying to find the date when search.cpan.org was created I bumped into this GitHub repository. Fascinating.
2018.06.26 in #362CPAN History
Neil Bowers presents the history of CPAN with such a detailed description.
2018.09.11 in #373Trying the Fira Code font
This looks crazy. On one hand the operators look probably much closer to their meaning, on the other hand this hides the actual characters in use. Certainly interesting. I wonder if this will catch on.
2019.05.12 in #407PAUSE Projects at PTS 2019
What is PAUSE and what does it do? Why is it important for you? How do we knoe PAUSE works properly? What has been done at the Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS)?
2019.06.20 in #413An interface to WordsAPI
Neil Bowers took the optional API challenge to another level and published interface to Words API. Checkout his blog about his story.
2019.08.01 in #423Fastmail and Perl: an interview with Ricardo Signes
An interview with Ricardo Signes about his involvement with the Perl Toolchain Summit, and why Fastmail - his employer - continues to support both the PTS and Rik's attendance.
2020.03.19 in #452PTS 2020 Cancelled
Neil Bowers announced PTS 2020 cancelled and hoped to be back next year in Vienna.
2020.07.24 in #470Inconsistent permissions on CPAN modules
After a long time, Neil wrote a blog. Like always he brought a very relevant subject and shared the finer details. I have adopted 30+ CPAN modules myself, so this information is very handy for me.
2020.09.03 in #476Solving word search puzzles in Perl
The "Word Search" task was proposed by Neil Bowers himself. So I was expecting some magic from him. I must say he didn't disappoint me. Thanks Neil for the blog.
2020.10.06 in #481Opt-in your CPAN repos for Hacktoberfest
As the Hacktoberfest got more popular it started to generate more and more tiny, many times meaningless pull-requests. I received a few of them. Instead of creating values, this started to become a burden for many authors. Now they changed the rules so you need to opt-in your repository or, as far as I understand, you can also mark a pull-request as 'valid for hacktoberfest'. I really hope this isn't an overshooting in the other direction. In any case, Neil explains what you can do to opt-in your GitHub repo.
2020.12.04 in #489Perl and Camels
In a nutshell: We can use any camel anywhere except for two cases: we can't use the specific one O'Reilly has on its Camel book and we can't use a camel on a Perl-related book cover published by a publisher that isn't O'Reilly. Reddit
2021.03.23 in #505CPAN River position vs time since last release
CPAN RP is an indicator how many other modules depend on. It is nice to draw this, but I don't really know what conclusions can be drawn about any relationship between these two values. What does it really mean if a distribution has not been released for years. Is it abandoned? Is it (almost) perfect so that no serious bugs exists that would be worth the effort of the release? What does it mean if something was released 2 weeks ago? What if this happened after a 5-year break?
2021.05.08 in #511Open Letter to the Perl Foundation Board
In a nutshell: The behaviour of Individual 1 and Individual 2 were unacceptable to some of the signatories, but this not the way to punish them. See also the discussion on Reddit.
2021.05.16 in #513Improving p5p: Perl is going to stay Perl
Is this just a clickbait subject line, or is this saying that 'Some people wanted to change Perl to be something not-Perl, but now the language is saved from those people.'?
