Warning: CPAN Module May Explode

Programming Perl has always involved laziness in one form or another. CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive network, is a large, centralized repository of publicly available Perl modules (and scripts and programs) that helps to advance this lofty goal of laziness.

CPAN is huge. “That’s a good thing.” But that’s also a bad thing. There is a search engine, but how does one wade through all the available results to find the optimal solution for one’s problem (without writing the code itself)?

CPAN now has ratings and reviews. Although the commenting system is relatively new, there are already some useful entries:

http://cpanratings.perl.org/dist/NetxAP

The reviewer states that the Net::IMAP module does not pass its own tests and has been neglected, and suggests using Mail::IMAPClient instead:

http://cpanratings.perl.org/dist/Mail-IMAPClient

In contrast, the reviews for Mail::IMAPClient are generally positive.

Over time, the ratings and review system will improve with more contributions by fellow lazy developers. You can do your part by venting your frustrations with buggy modules or celebrating useful, time-saving modules.