3 ms·

Thoughts on Clojure Package Management

27 points by icey 17y ago

icey 17y ago
I know we have some big time Perl folks here... Can anyone give a synopsis of how the CPAN approval process works? It's been held up as the gold standard for just about every new language over the past decade. Having only consumed resources from it, I've got no idea how things get into CPAN to begin with.
- flogic 17y ago
  I think you just get an account and upload your stuff. CPAN has a lot of great stuff it also has a lot of crap. That's how it's supposed to be.
  - Kototama 17y ago
    That's it. And everyone can register and upload code. Some tests from the CPAN servers are regulary runned against your code and you get notified by email, but that's all about it really. Darwin selection ;-).
jamesbritt 17y ago
"These days, when everyone has a blog and a Github account, sharing code is easy. Doing “git push” requires almost no thought, no investment of time. Why not release everything, even when it’s untested, undocumented, or unfinished?" Indeed, why not? Getting code in front of eyeballs is one way to improve testing and documentation, and getting features finished. You don't have to grab stuff from a repo, but often it's nice to be able to use something even if it's crap, when the alternative is nothing at all. "I concluded that it’s just too early. Clojure is a scarcely two years old. It just released “1.0″ this year, and is still developing rapidly." Wrong approach. Rubygems made it way easier for people to try things out and have some fin with other people's code. Likewise, Cabal for Haskell has made it much simpler for me to poke around in a language I'm just learning. Ruby got a big boost from Rails, and the reason Rails got traction was because it was stupid simple to install and start using. If people had to run arcane compilation tools or track down dependencies, things would have been very different. Every new language designed should include a simple and accessible package management process from the very start to boost adoption and contribution.

27 points by icey 17y ago

icey 17y ago

I know we have some big time Perl folks here... Can anyone give a synopsis of how the CPAN approval process works? It's been held up as the gold standard for just about every new language over the past decade. Having only consumed resources from it, I've got no idea how things get into CPAN to begin with.

flogic 17y ago
I think you just get an account and upload your stuff. CPAN has a lot of great stuff it also has a lot of crap. That's how it's supposed to be.
- Kototama 17y ago
  That's it. And everyone can register and upload code. Some tests from the CPAN servers are regulary runned against your code and you get notified by email, but that's all about it really. Darwin selection ;-).

jamesbritt 17y ago

"These days, when everyone has a blog and a Github account, sharing code is easy. Doing “git push” requires almost no thought, no investment of time. Why not release everything, even when it’s untested, undocumented, or unfinished?" Indeed, why not? Getting code in front of eyeballs is one way to improve testing and documentation, and getting features finished. You don't have to grab stuff from a repo, but often it's nice to be able to use something even if it's crap, when the alternative is nothing at all. "I concluded that it’s just too early. Clojure is a scarcely two years old. It just released “1.0″ this year, and is still developing rapidly." Wrong approach. Rubygems made it way easier for people to try things out and have some fin with other people's code. Likewise, Cabal for Haskell has made it much simpler for me to poke around in a language I'm just learning. Ruby got a big boost from Rails, and the reason Rails got traction was because it was stupid simple to install and start using. If people had to run arcane compilation tools or track down dependencies, things would have been very different. Every new language designed should include a simple and accessible package management process from the very start to boost adoption and contribution.