

Thoughts on Clojure Package Management - icey
http://stuartsierra.com/2009/08/31/thoughts-on-clojure-package-management

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jamesbritt
"These days, when everyone has a blog and a Github account, sharing code is
easy. Doing “git push” requires almost no thought, no investment of time. Why
not release everything, even when it’s untested, undocumented, or unfinished?"

Indeed, why not? Getting code in front of eyeballs is one way to improve
testing and documentation, and getting features finished.

You don't have to grab stuff from a repo, but often it's nice to be able to
use something even if it's crap, when the alternative is nothing at all.

"I concluded that it’s just too early. Clojure is a scarcely two years old. It
just released “1.0″ this year, and is still developing rapidly."

Wrong approach. Rubygems made it way easier for people to try things out and
have some fin with other people's code. Likewise, Cabal for Haskell has made
it much simpler for me to poke around in a language I'm just learning.

Ruby got a big boost from Rails, and the reason Rails got traction was because
it was stupid simple to install and start using. If people had to run arcane
compilation tools or track down dependencies, things would have been very
different.

Every new language designed should include a simple and accessible package
management process from the very start to boost adoption and contribution.

------
icey
I know we have some big time Perl folks here... Can anyone give a synopsis of
how the CPAN approval process works? It's been held up as the gold standard
for just about every new language over the past decade. Having only consumed
resources from it, I've got no idea how things get into CPAN to begin with.

~~~
flogic
I think you just get an account and upload your stuff. CPAN has a lot of great
stuff it also has a lot of crap. That's how it's supposed to be.

~~~
Kototama
That's it. And everyone can register and upload code. Some tests from the CPAN
servers are regulary runned against your code and you get notified by email,
but that's all about it really. Darwin selection ;-).

