I can only say that it enhances my virtuous hubris that the mighty CPAN is the standard by which others are measured. CPAN facilitates my laziness and satisfies my impatience with its rich and numerous offerings.

It sounds as if the Ruby folks may one day soon have a similar treasure of their own. May it bring them the joy that CPAN has brought me.

Agreed. Is there really a competition and must they be mutually exclusive? I think that the quality of a code repo is a reflection of the community at large, and if Ruby gets even close to enjoying what Perl has, then that is good for all programmers. On the other hand, CPAN is not why I love Perl, so there is nothing that RubyForge could become that would make me switch.

Dont forget that the CPAN librarian (Jarkko) has long encouraged other languages to follow his example. What i found interesting about the article was the user counts. Does RubyForge require users to be registered to download code? If so then it would explain the difference in number of users.

Does RubyForge require users to be registered to download code?

Nope - but there are forums and some other stuff that are better when registered. Really RF is closer to SourceForge than it is to CPAN in many ways, with Gems doing a chunk of the long-list-o-stuff the various interpretations of CPAN do.

the article says:

Fourth, library quality and usefulness (more subjective here). There’s a lot of overlap and, well, cruft on CPAN. There are over 300 Acme (joke) modules.

SuperGumby> OH, and reading this group daily (if only it wasn't quite 
+so busy).
SuperGumby> PS Why does it appear perl programmers are so damned obses
+sed with
SuperGumby> oneliners, I'm feeling as if I'm gonna be ostracised for c
+ommenting and
SuperGumby> structuring,,, maybe I'll know why in a few months :-)

Because Perl's so durn easy to use we got time to play around impressi
+ng
each other. :)
[download]

so even the number of libraries/modules doesn't tell you how great a repository is. in perl, many things aren't needed which are in other languages (and probably the other way round).

just adding this as another thought.

Most CPAN modules come with test cases, test reports are gathered in central places and are easily available. Is there something similar for ruby libs?

Most CPAN modules come with test cases, test reports are gathered in central places and are easily available. Is there something similar for ruby libs?

Ruby has a pretty good testing culture, but it's not in the infrastructure quite as much as it is with CPAN yet.

Perl has never been the only language with a repository like CPAN; it's probably not even close to the biggest, and it's certainly not the oldest.

Broadly similar repositories exist for every language used for serious work, with different rules for how code gets uploaded and maintained. Examples include netlib, StatCodes, CRAN, and quite a few others. CPAN is not being usurped by RubyForge any more than CRAN is being usurped by CPAN.

Perl has never been the only language with a repository like CPAN; it's probably not even close to the biggest, and it's certainly not the oldest.

In fact the idea and very name were inspired by CTAN.

But in all seriousness, I hope the Ruby folks keep pumping out great code. It can only help us all as open-source programmers.

-sam

Perl's killer feature is Perl. CPAN is a wonderful achievement, but folks have already mentioned that Perl is not the first language to have a library repository.

Rubyforge is an interesting alternative to Sourceforge for projects in the Ruby language. The gems repository is a growing supply of readily accessible libraries. They are not exactly the same thing, even though they are served from the same place. I know a growing number of Ruby developers who use gems regularly but are only vaguely aware of Rubyforge.

Nobody is usurping anything, and I'm not sure if the comparison is valid.

I have become impatient with certain aspects of the Ruby culture over the years. Ruby is a great language and folks are creating all sorts of interesting projects with it, but many users of the language are stuck in this youngest-child sort of "We're worthy! Notice us! Validate us!" frenzy. Not all of them, obviously, but enough that I can't handle reading the ruby-talk postings more often than about once per week. Yes, Ruby is great. Now shut up and get some work done.

I thought it was the other way around! We've taken "puts" and renamed it "say" for Perl 5.10. Now Ruby doesn't have a chance!