Reviewing CPAN Modules

By Neil Bowers (‎NEILB‎) from ThamesValley.pm
Date: Saturday, 24 November 2012 11:20
Duration: 50 minutes
Target audience: Any
Language: English

Supporters of CPAN often proclaim how wonderful it is that CPAN has over 110K modules in over 25K distributions. It's not all good though: for many tasks there are often many modules to choose from, and it can be tricky to find them all, let alone work out which is the best for your needs.

This prompted me to start writing reviews of CPAN modules for performing particular tasks. I've published 9 reviews so far, with more in the works. For every module I review, I write test code and usually end up reading the source in depth. I also have a rule that I have to report any bugs I find, and submit fixes if they're not too taxing.

I'll talk through the process I use, and the tools I've developed to support it. I'll also present a number of observations about CPAN and the module creation process, leading to thoughts on how the situation might be improved.