1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
|
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head><title>PAUSE</title></head><body>
<h2><a href="https://pause.kbx.de/pause/">The Perl Authors Upload Server</a></h2>
<p><i>
<!-- hhmts start -->
Last modified: Tue Dec 5 21:07:00 CET 2000
<!-- hhmts end -->
$Revision: 1.3 $
</i></p>
<h3>Contents</h3>
<p>This document informs about</p>
<ol type="1">
<li><a href="#status">Status of this document</a></li>
<li><a href="#upload">Uploading</a></li>
<li><a href="#registering">Registering as a developer</a></li>
<li><a href="#menu">Visit PAUSE</a></li>
<li><a href="#duties">Your duties, the basics, traps</a></li>
<li><a href="#namespace">Register your namespace!</a></li>
<li><a href="#conventions">Other conventions you should know about</a></li>
<li><a href="#services">Related services on PAUSE</a></li>
<li><a href="#ssl">SSL support on PAUSE</a></li>
<li><a href="#credits">Software used to run PAUSE</a></li>
</ol>
<h3><a id="status" name="status">Status of this document</a></h3>
This document is mirrored on CPAN as <i>CPAN</i>/modules/04pause.html.
<h3><a id="upload" name="upload">Uploading</a></h3>
A server dedicated to collect the work of perl authors is a <a
href="https://pause.kbx.de/pause/">Perl Authors Upload Server
(PAUSE)</a>. PAUSE provides personal directories and enables their
owners to upload their work into that directory themselves. The
procedure of uploading is trivial and needs no explanation here.
You'll understand it as soon as you have access to the PAUSE. There's
only one thing you need to know as soon as possible:
<blockquote>
<b>Please,</b> make sure the filename you choose contains a <b>version
number</b>. For security reasons you will never be able to upload a
file with identical name again. This strict requirement does have one
exception: documentation files may be overwritten. There's a simple
regular expression that draws the line between docu und code:
<code>/(README|readme|\.html|\.txt)$/</code>. Filenames matching this
RE can be uploaded as often as you like. By the way: it is highly
appreciated, if your packages come tarred and gzipped with a
Makefile.PL, so they can be installed in a standard way.
</blockquote>
<p>The upload server is not very well connected. Please don't mirror
from there. The <a
href="ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/">funet</a> server in
Finland mirrors every hour the new incoming stuff, so please try to
download from there or from other CPAN sites.</p>
<h3><a id="registering" name="registering"></a>Register yourself</h3>
Registered developers have a unique username and a home directory in
the <i>authors/id/</i> tree of CPAN. The write access to that
directory is password protected.
If you have written a module, script, or documentation, if you have
some porting material or patches you would like to contribute to the
archive, send the following to the maintainers at modules@perl.org
(Note: your email will be made publicly available)
<ul>
<li> your name</li>
<li> your email address</li>
<li> your homepage if you have one</li>
<li> your preferred user-ID on CPAN. It must be between 4 and 9
characters long, all uppercase, letters only. One dash allowed.</li>
<li> a description of what you're planning to contribute</li>
<li> for modules a description in module list format (DSLI
entry, which is: Development stage, Support level, Language used,
Interface style (see the <a
href="00modlist.long.html#1)ModuleListing"
>modulelist</a>), and a 44 character description).</li>
<li> for scripts, ports, documentation, etc. please send a concise
description that helps us to categorize the issue so we can forward
your mail to the maintainers of the corresponding archive branch.</li>
<li> It would be very nice, if you could also send a note about
where you have discussed some or all parts of your contribution
publicly, and if there was at least a little bit of interest. We are
quite open for submissions, but we owe our users at least some
rudimentary quality control. If your work has never been discussed
publicly, then it's extremely difficult for us to make our judgement
whether to accept the submission or not.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
Also: think carefully and honestly whether your module would be better
off if it were integrated as an option into an already existing module.
Sometimes it is for the best to put aside personal glory and join
a collaborative effort: Perl itself is a good example of this.
Contact the author of an existing module and ask whether your new
features would fit into his framework. Even if you in the end
decide to release the module as your very own, you really should
know your 'competition', that is, know all the similar modules
and the features they offer. Maybe you can learn from them.
</blockquote>
<p>You will be notified by email about your registration. Please allow
three weeks for proceeding, which should be the maximum during
vacation time. Normally we hope to register you within a week. All
mails to modules@perl.org is archived at <a
href="http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/modules">http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/modules</a>.
modules@perl.org isn't a mailing list, just an alias for the front
desk of the Perl 5 modules list. Please do not subscribe. Visit the
archive instead.</p>
<p>And please do consult these archive before you post a module proposal.
The fulltext search capabilities of the archive should help you to
find similar suggestions and contact addresses. modules@perl.org is
low volume, so your search in the archive is quite targetted. The
module list maintainers themselves are mostly lurkers. You need not
wait for a response. Generally a lack of response can be taken as
acceptance of the module name being proposed. Note by KS: If you want
a quick response, be sure to ask if anybody actually reads the list.
This is guaranteed to produce at least ten responses in rapid
suggestion (none of which will respond to your proposal).</p>
<h3><a id="menu" name="menu"></a>Visit PAUSE</h3>
<p>As soon as you have a password (see <a
href="#registering">registering</a>) you are enabled to use some <a
href="https://pause.kbx.de/pause/authenquery">forms to interact with
the PAUSE database</a> (<a
href="http://pause.kbx.de/pause/authenquery">Non-SSL version</a>). You
can add files to your home directory, edit your name, email, and
homepage address, delete your files, change your password on PAUSE,
etc.</p>
<p>If you haven't got a password yet or have forgotten it, please visit
<a href="https://pause.kbx.de/pause/query?ACTION=mailpw"
>https://pause.kbx.de/pause/query?ACTION=mailpw</a> (<a
href="http://pause.kbx.de/pause/query?ACTION=mailpw"
>Non-SSL version</a>) for further instructions.</p>
<p>Please, whenever you exchange email with the maintainers of PAUSE,
mention either your userid or the name you used when you registered.</p>
<h3><a id="duties" name="duties">Your duties, the basics, traps</a></h3>
We trust that you have read the module list top down and bottom up and
back again and that you regularly check out uploads to CPAN and that
you have been watching CPAN activities for a while to have an
impression of how things fit together. It usually boils down to
(slogan shamelessly stolen and adapted from sudo(1)):
<ol>
<li> Think, better even <b>talk</b> before you upload</li>
<li> Respect the namespace of others</li>
</ol>
<h3><a id="namespace" name="namespace">Register your namespace!</a></h3>
<p><b>Please,</b> talk to <b>modules@perl.org</b> before you decide upon
the namespace you're going to use for your module. Usually it's not
considered the perl way to have beaurocratic conventions, but when it
comes to namespace pollution, there is the need of coordination. Just
like the InterNIC has to care for unique names for internet hosts,
somebody has to (sort of) guarantee uniqueness, consistency, and
sanity of module names. The <a
href="00modlist.long.html">modulelist</a> is the place where all
currently registered module names can be found and the email address
<b>modules@perl.org</b> is an alias for a hand full of experienced
volunteers who maintain the module list and give advice for the
appropriate namespace for your modules.</p>
<p>Please consider the namespace you're going to occupy with all due
sensitivity. Discuss it in the appropriate fora. Read what the <a
href="00modlist.long.html#2)Guidelinesfor">modulelist</a> has to say
about this. Please pay special attention to the hints about 'cutesy'
names. Reading these sections carefully will help you and us to
greatly improve the usefulness of the CPAN and avoid cumbersome
renaming at a later date.</p>
<p>The indexes that are maintained automatically on CPAN all double check
if the module names that are used in the uploaded packages are
registered. The indexer unwraps all packages and scans the source code
(namely all <code>*.pm</code> files) for package declarations. You run
the <b>risk of being ignored</b> by the index generator if you do not
talk to the modulelist maintainers about the namespace you are
using.</p>
<p><b>modules@perl.org</b> is not a mailing list. Please do not try to
subscribe. We do not want to establish yet another perl mailing list.
If we encounter hot topics, we move the discussion to the appropriate
mailing lists. The traffic on <b>modules@perl.org</b> is archived at
<a
href="http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/modules/">http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/modules/</a>.</p>
<p> Please consult these archives before you post a module proposal.
The fulltext search capabilities of the archive should help you to
find similar suggestions and contact addresses.
<b>modules@perl.org</b> is low volume, so your search in the archive
is quite targetted. The module list maintainers themselves are mostly
lurkers. You need not wait for a response. Generally a lack of
response can be taken as acceptance of the module name being proposed.</p>
<h3><a id="conventions" name="conventions">Other conventions you should know about</a></h3>
<p>Do not upload the <b>READMEs</b> that are integrated in your distribution
files. PAUSE is designed to take care of unwrappig your file with tar
or zip, registering all the modules it finds in there, and placing the
readme file (i.e. a file with the name <code><b>README</b></code> in
the top level directory of your package) into your directory. PAUSE
will change the name of the file to
<code><i>package-name</i><b>.readme</b></code>. It should do so within
a few hours after your upload.</p>
<p>Please make sure all your <code>*.pm</code> files contain a
<b><code>$VERSION</code></b> variable that conforms to the CPAN rules, i.e.
the complete computation of $VERSION must take place on the one first
line within the module that assigns to it. You can test if this is the
case by running <br /><code>perl -MExtUtils::MakeMaker -le
'print MM->parse_version(shift)' filename</code><br />
on the filenames in question. The CPAN indexer will run this code
within a Safe compartement.</p>
<p>The automatic integration of your work into several <b>indexes</b> and
directory trees is not always in accordance with what you desire. If
you want to <b>prevent propagation</b> to places outside of your
directory, simply choose a filename that matches
<b><code>/\d\.\d+_\d/</code></b>, i.e. something that looks like
derived from a perl subversion number (maybe because it <i>is</i> a
perl subversion). PAUSE will leave such distributions untouched: no
readme will be extracted, no index will be updated, no symlinks will
be created.</p>
<p>Any distribution that arrives at PAUSE is checked for <b>package names</b>
contained in the distribution. A package name that arrives for the
first time is automatically assigned either to the author who
submitted it or to user <i>perl</i> if the distribution file is a perl
distribution. A package name that has already been used before must be
submitted by its author, otherwise PAUSE will trigger a warning to the
administrator. That way PAUSE will prevent accidental usage of a
package namespace by more than one author.</p>
<p>Be prepared that very soon after your upload your module will be
tested on dozens of architectures by the never tired <a
href="http://www.perl.org/cpan-testers/results.cgi">cpan-testers</a>.
This helpful lot will send their findings to their mailing list and
collect the results in a database. If they find problems, they try to
diagnose or even solve them and inform you about their findings. So be
prepared to get mail from them before you have closed the buffer in
your editor.</p>
<h3><a id="services" name="services"></a>Related services on PAUSE</h3>
<p>The interdependence between metadata generators, metadata files,
database tables, and human intervention are as follows:</p>
<table border="1">
<tr><td colspan="12" align="center">
<h3>Modulelist Maintainance</h3>
The <a href="#namespace">above</a> described <a
href="00modlist.long.html">Module List</a> is the heart. It is
maintained manually and all modules listed there have to go through
the <a href="#namespace">standard approval procedure</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="5" align="center">
On a more or less regular basis, the Module List is published on
USENET in the newsgroups comp.lang.perl.modules, comp.answers, and
news.answers. Simultaneously an <a href="00modlist.long.html">HTML
version</a> and a <a href="03modlist.data.gz">machine readable
representation</a> are uploaded to CPAN.
</td>
<td colspan="7" align="center">
Jon Orwant is on the board of the module list maintainance group. He's
maintaining a document with a different, considerably more verbose
view on the evolving modules scene, <a
href="../CPAN.html">CPAN.html</a>.
</td>
</tr>
<tr><td colspan="12" align="center">
<h3>Authors Registration</h3>
The maintainers of the Module List do not only register modules'
namespaces, they also register new authors and assign them a password
that enables them to upload to the CPAN.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="6" align="center">
Two documents are available about authors. <a
href="../authors/00whois.html">00whois.html</a> is a list of authors,
mailing lists and mailing list archives in HTML format,
</td>
<td colspan="6" align="center">
and <a
href="../authors/01mailrc.txt.gz">01mailrc.txt.gz</a> is a smaller
list intended to be used as a .mailrc file. Both files are maintained
automatically.
</td>
</tr>
<tr><td colspan="12" align="center">
<h3>Upload Scanner</h3>
When new files arrive on the PAUSE, an Upload Scanner program scans
the new files and categorizes them according to their contents. It
tries to detect namespace clashes and to keep track of version
numbers.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="4" align="center">
The document <a href="01modules.index.html">01modules.index.html</a>
lists only the most recent distribution files that contain the latest
of any given module that is available on CPAN. A second version of
this document is also available that is <a
href="01modules.mtime.html">sorted by modification date</a>. Both are
maintained by the scanner automatically.
</td> <td colspan="4" align="center">The listing <a
href="02packages.details.txt.gz">02packages.details.txt</a> is also
produced automatically. It is intended for programs but sometimes is a
valuable information for humans too. It simply lists the current
version number and the distribution file for all packages found on
CPAN.
</td> <td colspan="4" align="center">There are also two symlink trees of
modules maintained automatically. One is based on the basenames of the
packages involved: <a href="by-module">by-module</a> and the other one
devides the modules by the chapters of the Module List: <a
href="by-category">by-category</a>. </td> </tr> </table>
<h3><a id="ssl" name="ssl"></a>SSL support on PAUSE</h3>
<p>PAUSE supports both http and https (SSL). Please try PAUSE over an SSL
connection if you can. For our firewall impaired developers we will
keep up the http server for the time being. So if you have
difficulties accessing https, you can always fall back to http, but
using SSL greatly improves your and PAUSE's security.</p>
<p>PAUSE's private key is not registered with any certificate authority,
so when you access the SSL channel for the first time, your browser
will most likely complain that it <i>does not recognize the authority
who signed its Certificate</i>. You can safely ignore this error. When
you verify the fingerprint to be
B4:96:CD:65:5C:B4:2F:2A:EC:D6:5E:5F:FC:D0:8E:0B, then you know you're
talking to the real PAUSE.</p>
<h3><a id="credits" name="credits"></a>Software</h3>
<p>The software running PAUSE consists of a database, which is driven by
<a href="http://www.tcx.se/">mysql</a> and a <a
href="http://perl.apache.org">mod_perl</a> server with <a
href="ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/SSL/">SSL</a>. Besides many of the
perl standard modules like CGI, Data::Dumper, Text::Wrap, File,
Directory, and IO modules, PAUSE itself uses lots of modules from the
CPAN. For a complete list, feel free to visit <a
href="http://pause.kbx.de/perl-status">http://pause.kbx.de/perl-status</a>.
Also a lot of work is done by the mirror program by Lee McLoughlin,
available from the CPAN scripts/ftpstuff directory.</p>
<p>Thanks to all of you for your great contributions!</p>
<hr /> Contact <a href="mailto:koenig@pause.kbx.de">Andreas
König</a> for any questions.
<pre>
<a id="pubkey" name="pubkey"></a>PGP public key for Andreas Koenig <koenig@franz.ww.TU-Berlin.DE>
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.2i
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface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=zlTu
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
</pre>
</body>
</html>
|
