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The Phalanx 100 is a list of the "top 100" modules on CPAN, and by extension, those that should have the most attention paid to them by the Phalanx project.

The first time I generated the P100 was over a year ago, and things are old and stale. Distributions have changed names (CGI::Kwiki is now Kwiki, for example). Some distros have come and some have gone. It's time to be updated.

This time, YOU can help determine the P100. The source data, generated from logs from the main CPAN mirror at pair.com, is available for download at http://petdance.com/random/cpan-gets.gz. Write code that analyzes the data, and generates the top 100 modules.

What should your code do? It's up to you! Publish the code somewhere (use.perl.org, perlmonks, whatever) and let me see it. I'm not sure if I'll take someone's decisions directly, or use ideas, or how I'll do it, but the more working code I have to pick from, the better.

Also, the last time I created a P100, I omitted any modules that were in the core distribution. This time, I do want to include core modules, although I do want to have them noted somehow. Richard Clamp's Module::CoreList will be a great help with this.

Whatever you do, however you do it, I need to know about your code no later than January 10th, 2005. Email me at andy at petdance.com. There's going to be an article about the Phalanx project going up on perl.com soon after that, and I need to have an updated version of the P100 up (replacing http://qa.perl.org/phalanx/distros.html) by then.

About the data

I used the following code to analyze data from the Apache logs for the main CPAN mirror at Pair.com from November 1 to December 15th, 2004.

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    use strict;
    use warnings;

    my %id;
    my $next_id = 10000;

    while (<>) {
        next unless m!^\S+ (\S+) .+ "GET ([^"]+) HTTP/\d\.\d" 200!;
        my ($ip,$path) = ($1,$2);

        study $path;

        # Skip directories
        next if $path =~ /\/$/;  # Directory
        next if $path =~ /\/\?/; # Directory with sort parms

        # Skip certain directories
        next if $path =~ /^\/(icons|misc|ports|src)\//;

        # Skip certain file extensions
        next if $path =~ /\.(rss|html|meta|readme)$/;

        # Skip CPAN & distro maintenance stuff
        next if $path =~ /CHECKSUMS$/;
        next if $path =~ /MIRRORING/;

        # Module list stuff
        next if $path =~ /\Q00whois./;
        next if $path =~ /\Q01mailrc./;
        next if $path =~ /\Q02packages.details/;
        next if $path =~ /\Q03modlist./;

        my $id = ($id{$ip} ||= ++$next_id);

        print "$id $path\n";
    }
[download]

This gives lines like this:

    16395 /authors/id/K/KE/KESTER/WWW-Yahoo-DrivingDirections-0.07.tar
+.gz
    10001 /authors/id/K/KW/KWOOLERY/Buzznet-API-0.01.tar.gz
    85576 /authors/id/J/JR/JROGERS/Net-Telnet-3.01.tar.gz
    85576 /authors/id/J/JR/JROGERS/Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz
    85576 /authors/id/J/JR/JROGERS/Net-Telnet-3.03.tar.gz
[download]

The 5-digit number is an ID number for a given IP address. I found that some IPs were routinely slurping down entire histories of modules, which probably will skew statistics to those with a lot of revisions.

How should these be accounted for in the analysis? I don't know. That's one of the reasons that I put this out for all to work on.

I welcome your comments, suggestions and help on this.

xoxo,
Andy

In reply to Help update the Phalanx 100 by petdance

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