http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=1214836


in reply to Goodbye search.cpan.org

Sad news, and I frown upon the reasons for its going away. From the announcement:

In recent years maintenance has become a burden. Most of the site is running 2005 era Perl code.

As if old code would rot away. And below in the comments, this (emphasis mine):

Nigel HorneMay 17, 2018 at 1:00 PM

That's a shame. I prefer the clean interface of search.cpan.org over the metacpan site.

Where's the source code? May be kinda fun to play around with.
DanMay 17, 2018 at 1:29 PM

https://github.com/metacpan/metacpan-web for the interface, https://github.com/metacpan/metacpan-api for the search/index backend


DanMay 17, 2018 at 1:37 PM

If you meant the source code of cpansearch, it has never been published.

Wait, what? It has never been published? And then maintenance becomes a burden? Whilst I am deeply thankful for Graham for having it written in the first place, and all maintainers who helped to keep it running, I have to say:

Congrats, search.cpan.org maintainers for not leveraging support from the community which this wonderful tool helped to build.

Perl itself is in git for a long time now. Why didn't that happen with the code for that site?

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

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Re^2: Goodbye search.cpan.org
by marto (Cardinal) on May 18, 2018 at 12:16 UTC

    You make a good point, sadly I don't have any answers for you. Please reply if you do find the authoritative answers.

      No authoritative answers yet, sorry for that. But from the facts and the responses I got so far it looks like Graham Barr just didn't release the code under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License or such and doesn't mean to do so for whatever reason. I am not going to stalk GBARR to do so, and nobody should. If he does release in perl terms, fine.

      All Things Must Pass.

      perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

        Thanks, for the record I wasn't suggesting anybody stalk or harass anyone involved. I was just curious for the history behind the situation. As mentioned earlier, metacpan has a published source on github, and an API (see also MetaCPAN::Client). If you want to add some functionality or write a client to get the look and feel you want, these are options.

        This too shall pass.