Re^3: metacpan link shortcut?

[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?

[jdporter]

There is now a [metacpan:// ] shortcut type for people to try. It just goes to the generic search form on the main page. If/when I find some documentation on specializing syntax (e.g. dist:, author:, we might add something to accommodate those in our own syntax. Otherwise/in the mean time, you can just stick that stuff into your link. [metacpan://author:ingy] ⇒ author:ingy.