The 6-Month Ruling

Recently I have started going through all my CPAN modules one-by-one and getting any fixes that are in there out onto CPAN. Some have had bug fixes sitting in the repository for at least 1 year. Because of this, I’m thinking of giving myself a “6-month ruling” where I should probably release a new version of a module at least every 6 months. This should keep me from at least forgetting about publishing forgotten bug fixes in the repositories.

3 Comments

  1. Gabor Szabo says:

    Having something to regularly remind you about to check RT and outstanding fixes might be a good idea. Have you thought of finding someone else to co-maintain some of your modules? That might be another direction to solve the problem.

    • Well, my main problem is that I now spend the majority of my time working in JavaScript (in node.js and in web browsers), so I don’t get as much time as I’d like working with Perl. Some of the things are in modules which I don’t think many use, if anyone (I usually gauge the amount of people using a module based on how many emails I get regarding it).

      As for co-maint, if someone asks for co-maint on one of my modules I would likely grant it, thought I’m not actively looking to dump any of my current modules.

    • Also, another reason I’ve thought of this is say you have a module that works well, there are no new feature ideas and there are no known outstanding bugs. Then it stays that way for 2 years. Now, the module is good, work well, and everything is fine, but then just because the amount of time that has lapsed between releases, it starts to look like it is un(?:der)?-maintained, even though there hasn’t actually been anything to maintain.

      So I’ve been thinking maybe at least every 6 months, I should spruce it up a little bit a cut a new release, even though there were no real changes. Then for passers by the module won’t look stagnant.

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