Only the bravest CPAN warriors need apply

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Are you a CPAN warrior? Are you up for a challenge? Read on…

I have finally fixed the CPAN.pm branch that implements support for recommends and suggests prerequisites. It seems to work, but CPAN.pm internals are so hairy that I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still subtle bugs.

I don’t think it will melt your system, but it needs some real-world test driving.

Here’s how you can help:

  1. Install an up-to-date CPAN::Meta from CPAN
  2. Download the tarball for my ‘fix-retry-recommend-support’ branch of CPAN.pm
  3. Untar it
  4. Install it (inside the directory: make touchtestdistros && make test && make install)
  5. Fire up a cpan shell and turn on the new policies: o conf recommends_policy 1 and maybe o conf suggests_policy 1 and then o conf commit
  6. Install some modules that have recommends/suggests prerequisites

The best thing would be to start using this as your regular CPAN client for a while. (No, it’s not as quick and terse as cpanminus, but you’re a brave CPAN warrior and won’t let a little verbosity stop you, right?)

If you find bugs, file them on the pull-request thread.

With enough help, I hope to get this tested, merged, and shipped in time for Perl 5.20.

Thank you!

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