Re^3: How Many Modules Is Too Many?

[BigLug]

The following post should be in reply to gmpassos' post above.

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The biggest problem with using CPAN modules is code redundancy. Lets say that we have a module for creating a menu on the console. That module has code built in for ANSI escapes rather than using the ANSI modules. So we've saved loading some modules and people would be happy.

That's all well and good if all we want is a menu. However we also want to display a result message so we load the ANSI modules ourselves.

So now we have the ANSI functionality twice!

If the menu module documented that is contained ANSI methods we could, naturally, just use those. But consider this: We now want to use another module that displays a group of ANSI checkboxes .. and it was written by yet another developer so she's also included all the ANSI stuff in that module (to save people loading dozens of extra modules!)

So now we have the ANSI functionality twice again!

In situations where people don't want all the extra installation hassles with the extra modules, I'd encourage them to create bundles. Thus ANSI::Foo requires ANSI::Util rather than just replicating it's behaviour. But then there's Bundle::ANSI::Foo which installs all the prerequisites without too much user interaction.