[prog] Perl advice

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Mon, Jul 04, 2005 at 11:49:15AM +1000, Jacinta Richardson wrote:
> 
> Click on the distribution (XML-Simple-2.14) and you'll go to the 
> distribution homepage.  On this page should be a rating (5 stars for this 
> module) and an idea of how many people have rated it (6).  You can then 
> read their reviews if you want, or add your own rating.
> 
> Ratings are still fairly new so lots of good modules may exist which 
> haven't been rated.  You can help by reporting your experiences with them.

Another thing that one can check out, even if a module doesn't have a
rating, is the CPAN Testers link -- see (a) how many fails and (b) how
many passes.  Each "fail" and "pass" is for a different system (not just
MS-Windows vs Linux, but fine distinctions within that too).  See if it's
passed for your system.  See if it's passed for multiple systems.  If
there are a large number of systems listed, that's an indication that it
is (a) portable and (b) popular.

Not that it's a great disaster if there are a few fails, like, if the
module doesn't work on MS-Windows and you'll only be using it on Linux.
That's probably an indication that the code has some Unixisms in it,
rather than that it's a horrible module.

Another thing to check is the date and frequency and recentness of
updates to the module.  There are two kinds of modules to avoid: orphans
and mewling babies.  Orphans are modules whose last release was two or
three (or more) years ago; such modules are most likely to have suffered
from bit rot, and have possibly been superceded by something else and
thus their author abandoned them.  Mewling baby modules may have been
released recently, but they only have one or maybe two versions behind
them; someone is playing with a concept, but it hasn't really been
road-tested.  Sometimes mewling babies are orphans as well!

Kathryn Andersen
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