"CPAN" SIG?

[Hans Nowak]

Kragen Sitaker wrote:

> >> How about the Vaults of Parnassus?  http://www.vex.net/parnassus/
> >
> >That's just a bunch of links. :)  I don't have anything negative to say
> >about the Vaults, mind you, just that it is nothing like CPAN. I take it
> >there is no interest in such a project or SIG.
> 
> Quite the contrary; CPAN is one of the strongest arguments for using
> Perl in most situations.
> 
> I would like to note that Python has lots of stuff in the standard
> library you'd have to download from CPAN, which means you can find it
> by looking in the index to the library manual under things like
> 'basename' and 'http'.  So the situation with Python is not as dire.

[I replied to this thru eGroups, but the message doesn't seem to show up
anywhere, so I'll try again...]

I agree... the standard library is an impressive piece of work, and is
(and should be) one's first stop when looking for existing code/modules.
However, it's often not enough, and it cannot be compared to CPAN when
it comes to size. It's still pretty basic, and probably intended that
way (or it would have been extended with 100s of modules the last few
years). As such, for some problems it offers a solution; for other
problems, it offers the start of one.

I still think it would be nice to have a more-or-less "official" central
point where specialized modules could be found, downloaded and installed
easily. There are many third-party modules available now, too; but they
are scattered all over the place, sometimes different versions coexist,
documentation lacks, etc. 

I am not saying someone else should start this... I am willing to try
it... but before I do that I want to make sure there is enough interest
in such a project. Considering how much support my previous project got,
I think this is a valid concern.

Veel liefs,

--Hans Nowak