Re: metacpan link shortcut?

[davido]

There are three options: Point [cpan://.....] to metacpan, add [metacpan://......], or wait and see if if the new sensation (which seems cool but does say "beta" in the top right corner) has the staying power and real-world popularity to become at least nearly as ubiquitous as search.cpan.org.

It might not hurt to add yet another link type, but there's the question of whether it will get used enough to justify the work. That could be proven here as a test bed, or the the Monastery could take the wait and see approach. I don't know which is better in this case. Perhaps it is a topic of discussion for cabal based on the response in this thread.

I do suspect that the notion of redirecting [cpan://...] to the metacpan site would probably not happen as it would alter the behavior intended by the authors of thousands of existing PerlMonks posts.

[jdporter]

the Monastery could take the wait and see approach

I'm in favor of that.

it would alter the behavior intended by the authors of thousands of existing PerlMonks posts.

If that were an effect of the change, I would definitely oppose it. But I don't think it would be. cpan:// searches for the terms. It does not create deterministic links to specific pages. For that, we have mod:// and dist://.

[Anonymous Monk]

It might not hurt to add yet another link type, but there's the question of whether it will get used enough to justify the work.

Surely the work is trivial enough to need no justification

[davido]

Ok, a brief patch has been submitted. It now comes down to whether the patch is considered adequate, and whether the idea is considered good in the first place. We'll see what happens. If it gets applied the docs will be updated and a brief announcement may be made.

Update for clarification:

The patch creates a [metacpan://module::name] or [metacpan://] tag. The first goes directly to the module being requested. The second just goes to the metacpan.org home page. After a patch is submitted it usually has to go through a sort of informal review process by others in pmdev, as well as the gods. pmdev cannot apply a patch once it's been submitted though, only the gods can (not to throw anybody under the bus; just explaining the process). The patch could possibly never get applied for any of a number of reasons, including but certainly not limted to:

• It might be deemed inadequate (may fall short of solving the complete problem).
• It might be determined to contain bugs.
• Someone else may come up with an even better patch.
• It might be seen as something that could increase server load (though probably not in this situation.
• It might be seen as missing the mark; maybe a [metacpan://...] tag isn't as desirable as changing the [cpan://...] link behavior, for example.
• Maybe there will be hesitation as metacpan.org is still in beta status. Since we don't know what beta means in this case, it could be inadvisable to suddenly dump additional load on the metacpan.org servers. Maybe beta means it's running on someone's computer in their basement over a DSL link. Maybe it's just a side project on a server that couldn't handle the load. Maybe it has any number of reliability issues. Until we know what 'beta' means, we don't know how much the Monastery should rely on it.
• Adding to the previous thought, if the "right thing to do" is to change the [cpan://...] tag behavior, and yet we're hesitant to do so because we don't know about the reliability of a beta website, it doesn't make sense to roll out a [metacpan://....] tag now, only to pull it back and alter [cpan://....] behavior later once metacpan.org comes out of beta status.

So there are real reasons for not jumping too early at implementing a new feature. A patch has been submitted as a sort of 'proof of concept', but that doesn't mean the concept has come of age just yet. Maybe someone could jump who is a little more senior than I, to provide insight. But until then let's just be patient and see what happens. :)

[spazm]

Sweet! Thanks Dave.

Checking in four months later: have you received any word from pmdev and gods on if we'll get a MetaCPAN linking tag?