All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

CPAN testers idea

djberg96 on 2003-05-06T16:05:04

I downloaded the latest Unix::Processors today. It built, tested, and installed fine on my Solaris 9 box. The author did not have Solaris 9 listed as one of the platforms that he had successfully built on, and this gave me an idea.

As it stands now, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, if I sign up as a cpan tester, I will get an email notification for *every* new module uploaded to PAUSE. This would annoy me because it would be too many emails, and I wouldn't be inclinded to test most modules.

What I would *like* to see is the ability to sign up as a tester for *specific modules*. You would click on the "CPAN Testers" link and there would be a "sign up as a tester for module X" link. Then, you would provide your information, such as name, platform, etc (or perhaps it could use stored PAUSE information). Whenever a new upload of module X is uploaded, you receive an email and send in the test results (platform, pass/fail, etc).

Now, I *think* you can do this via CPANPLUS or CPAN::Test::Reporter, but I haven't looked at either module yet. In any case, I think adding something like that to cpan.org would be nice.

Mmmmm, maily goodness

petdance on 2003-05-06T16:11:00

Such a service would be great to have outside of the CPAN testers world. Lord knows there are a number of modules I rely on that it would be good to know when they get updated. OTOH, that's a LOT of modules.

Plus, running a module check on CPAN or CPANPLUS oughta take care of this need...

you don't have to be on the mailing list

hfb on 2003-05-06T16:15:38

to download the testers script and submit reports for any modules you want on any platforms you may have. Anyone can submit a report.

Re:you don't have to be on the mailing list

djberg96 on 2003-05-07T03:18:55

I'm having a bit of trouble with it, but I'll play some more before officially whining. In the meantime, what do you think of the "watch" idea, where you could receive emails when specific modules are updated?

Re:you don't have to be on the mailing list

hfb on 2003-05-07T08:22:17

I think that was part of the original design spec Graham had for search.cpan...that's an awful lot of email though, especially since you know there'll be kids who sign up for every bloody module. I don't know if Graham has any plans to revisit that part of the spec but someone could set up modtracker.cpan.org and do it themselves :) If you have the code, I've got a box....

CPAN daily

koschei on 2003-05-06T22:58:14

A great list is the cpan-update list. You can be mailed when uploads are made, or have a daily summary (as I do), or have a weekly summary. It's fairly painless reading the daily summaries and you also find out all sorts of interesting bits =)

procmail

koschei on 2003-05-06T22:59:30

Oh, while I think of it, you could always use procmail or similar to discard/accept appropriate upload emails.