http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=568477

jfrm has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear venerable brothers,

Although the virtually compulsory usefulness of CPAN is obvious 2 things strike me:

1. There are loads of sub-modules that are only used by their parent modules - these would never be used by themselves.

2. Some modules are critical, well loved and/or development is ongoing. Other modules are old and no longer recommended (e.g. I understand Rose:DB:Object and DBIx have kind of replaced Class::DBI) or used much. Some modules are obviously no longer supported. I suspect that some modules may also be posted by amateurs such as myself and should therefore have a health warning against them.

What this means is that when listing the modules, all the important critical/well loved modules are obscured by all the other sub-modules and modules that I probably don't want to know about.

So, the question is obvious: How do I see a list of only the important and proven modules?

I have no doubt that I'm not using all the modules I should be but then I don't know what's out there. Going through the complete list of modules finding out what they all do would take to much time. I would like to go through a list of the wheat without the chaff. Any suggestions?

thanks for your wise utterings.