At YAPC::Europe 2001, we distributed such a CD, using a script by Johan and some manual cleaning to get CPAN to fit on one CD. We decided to do this because we had two sponsors who wanted to sponsor CDs, but our proceedings didn't require more than one. We figured the CPAN CD might be of some use to people with slow links.

For this year's YAPC::Europe there was a discussion on the list about whether the CD was worthwhile, and several people indicated they were in fact using theirs. I think they went ahead and made the CD.

The only person who I've spoken with who is using the CD is Nick Clark. He has a slow link, and so he uses the CD as an incomplete local mirror, only fetching a module from another mirror if the version on the CD isn't the most recent. (For anyone who might have a similar problem, there's an answer in the CPANPLUS FAQ on how to set this up with CPANPLUS.)

I think this has more to do with the effort to break Perl in to manageable chunks. A CD probably isn't the best reason, but it would be nice to see deprecated modules somehow seperated from the rest (yet still available).

He has a slow link, and so he uses the CD as an incomplete local mirror, only fetching a module from another mirror if the version on the CD isn't the most recent. (For anyone who might have a similar problem, there's an answer in the CPANPLUS FAQ on how to set this up with CPANPLUS.)

And CPAN.pm does this by default as well. Put the http: URL first, and the file: URL later, and it'll automatically get the indicies from the first URL, but look at all file: URLs first for supplying the actual files, falling back to the first URL only if it cannot be gotten "locally". It's quite slick (and documented {grin}).

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker