Re: Need suggestions for terminology

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Ricardo Signes <[email protected]> wrote:
> We have a tool to do this, at work.  It isn't really in a state that I'd
> suggest others use it, but I would love to see something better than it become
> popular, as it has been *very* useful.  So, I will be happy to help, at least
> by telling you what we learned.
>
>  https://github.com/pobox/xpan

I remember you telling me a bit about it and I'll check it out again.

Frankly, I'm less concerned about constructing indices as that's a
relatively easily iterated problem.  The big hurdle I want to bridge
is to get regular old cpan(plus|m) using a new form of index that maps
packages to URLs (possibly URI::cpan::distfile) allowing any of these
as targets for fulfilling a request for a package:

  * cpan:///distfile/AUTHOR/Foo-Bar-1.23.tar.gz (e.g. a default CPAN repo)
  * cpan://backpan.perl.org/AUTHOR/Foo-Bar-1.23.tar.gz (e.g. alternate repo)
  * http://dev.example.com/Foo-Bar-1.23.tar.gz (e.g. internal tarball repo)

The point is that all we really need is "package -> tarball location"
map and if we teach CPAN clients to work from that, then we just need
to play around with index CRUD tools for PAUSE and private use.

-- David