> If I search for 'memory process' on freshmeat, I find LibGTop as 18th
> hit. That's bad. Much better 'memory usage total processes' returns
> only LibGTop. In this case I'd blame the bad search engine at
> freahmeat that finding the library is so difficult.
Freshmeat doesn't seem to me like the right place to be searching for
perl modules. In fact the description for libgtop on freshmeat doesn't
even mention that it has a perl interface. Libgtop is first of all a
C library which doesn't have any obvious connection to perl.
Let's look at the other way - if I'm a perl programmer and want to find
a perl module that will return process memory usage how am I supposed to
go about finding this module? I would think CPAN would be the correct
place to look and it turns out it is, but when I browse the hierarchy
there, or do a keyword search there, it's really difficult to determine
that gtop provides such a service.
If the hierarchy can't be improved, could the gtop author at least
include some text in the README that explains what sorts of services
this modules provides? Just saying "provides an interface to libgtop"
doesn't provide a lot of information - it assumes you already know
what libgtop does.
I don't want to rewrite software that's already out there, but
unfortunately when the modules that are out there are difficult to find,
that's what winds up happening.
