NEILB

CPAN Report 2026

2026-01-13T20:14:28Z

This is a look at CPAN activity through the end of 2025, to see whether CPAN authoring is decreasing, increasing, or holding level. I've done this a few times before, and the general trend has been a steady decline.

When asking to adopt a CPAN module please tell me your PAUSE id

2024-10-28T10:08:59Z

If you're emailing the PAUSE admin alias (modules@perl.org), saying that you want to adopt a module / distribution, please Please PLEASE include your PAUSE id in your email.

CPAN Report 2022

2023-07-13T21:49:43Z

This is a follow-up to last year's blog post, where I posted some charts to show how new CPAN users and distributions have changed over time. I meant to post this in January, but was repeatedly ambushed by yaks, and eventually decided it was too late. Then Olaf asked if I could show him updated charts with 2022 data, and I figured I might as well publish a belated report.

Creating a CPAN Author's Guide

2022-10-07T21:29:58Z

In the CPAN Report on 2021 I noted that there has been a steady decline in the number of new authors, releasing authors, and releases, year-on-year, for the last 8 years. In the conclusion, I noted one of the things that I thought would help is a "manual on how to become a good CPAN author". I wonder if we can use Hacktoberfest to get this started?

CPAN Report 2021

2022-02-07T22:07:36Z

This is a follow-up to last year's blog post, where I posted some charts to show how new CPAN users and distributions have changed over time. I've updated the charts to include data for 2021, and added a new chart to see if it adds anything else to the picture (spoiler: not really). The executive summary is that CPAN creation is continuing to decline.

Please delete your old releases from CPAN!

2021-05-10T19:03:12Z

PAUSE ran out of diskspace this weekend, so we're asking everyone to delete old releases from their author directory. Every release you do to CPAN stays in your author directory until you choose to delete it. Sometimes you might want your old releases to stay available, but most of the time you could happily delete them (they're always available on BackPAN). Below I'll explain how you can do this.

There's no such thing as "The Perl Community"

2021-04-27T23:02:46Z

We often talk about "The Perl Community", but I don't think it exists. Instead what we have is a loose, and at times fraught, federation of communities. Over the last few weeks I've been thinking and talking about this a lot, so I wanted to share some of those thoughts, and hear what others think. This is not me trying to tell you how things are, but how I see things, and also to outline some things that I think might help us be less fraught.

Optional use of modules

2021-04-04T11:39:24Z

Sometimes you want to optionally use a module in your code: if it's available, then load it, but if not, you can still proceed. I had to do this recently, and used one of the common approaches, but have been thinking it would be nice if this were easier to do.

CPAN River position vs time since last release

2021-03-23T20:54:46Z

As part of the CPAN Report post I did recently, I looked at how recently distributions had their last release, and how that varied with the river position (number of dependent distributions). I've been playing with some other ideas related to this, to see if they'll help identify distributions that could do with some TLC.

CPAN Report 2020

2021-03-03T09:01:44Z

CPAN was launched in 1995, so Perl developers have been sharing their code with each other for more than 25 years. In this post I'll share various charts that show how releases to CPAN have waxed and waned. I previously did a CPAN Report 2013, which as you'll see below, was when many measures were at or near their peak.