Scripts on CPAN

[BooK]

Is there any customary way to put scripts on CPAN? I've already put my script connect-tunnel on CPAN, just like a module distribution, but I wonder if that's the standard way to do it.

[PodMaster]

How do I contribute scripts to CPAN? says

CPAN has a scripts repository at http://www.cpan.org/scripts/ and http://www.cpan.org/scripts/submitting.html will instruct you on how to go about contributing your scripts.

and http://www.cpan.org/scripts/submitting.html says

How to submit a script to CPAN

1. Get a PAUSE ID; this is required to upload files to CPAN.
2. Create your script:
   • It must be a single file, not compressed or archived. This constraint will be relaxed in the future.
   • Insert the appropriate POD sections, as outlined below. (If you don't know what POD is, consult the `perlpod' manpage). There is one mandatory section, and several useful-but-optional sections.
   • The mandatory POD section is `SCRIPT CATEGORIES'. The existence of this section informs PAUSE that this is a script. The contents of this section indicate where the script should be presented in the categorized hierarchy; currently, you may specify up to three categories for your script.
   • The optional POD section `PREREQUISITES' contains a list of modules which this script requires in order to run.
   • The optional POD section `COREQUISITES' contains a list of modules which this script would benefit from having available, but which are not required.
   • The optional POD section `OSNAMES' contains a list of operating systems (as given in Perl's $^O variable) under which this script will run.
   • The contents of the optional POD section `README' will be automatically extracted and displayed.
3. You may wish to check your script's format against the example script.
4. Upload your script to PAUSE.
5. New script categories are not automatically created. If you stipulate a SCRIPT CATEGORIES entry that does not exist, it will be silently ignored. New categories are created via discussion on the scripts mailing list. Please join the list before posting to it, by sending an empty email to [e-mail].

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Contents of POD sections

The data in the POD sections, outlined above, must be presented in a machine-readable format. There are two ways to present the data:

1. Unadorned, one item per line.
2. Embedded in descriptive text, with the data appearing between C< and >.

The example script contains COREQUISITES, OSNAMES, and SCRIPT CATEGORIES sections in the first format, and a PREREQUISITES section in the second format.

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Improving the process

The scripts repository is still being refined. Please report and problems or suggestions to Kurt Starsinic.

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Last modified: Fri May 10 01:32:56 CEST 2002