I would like to take over maintenance of Module::Runtime. Further comments included below:
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Graham Knop <ha...@haarg.org> Date: Tue, Mar 18, 2025, 17:29 Subject: Re: ZEFRAM's CPAN distributions To: Neil Bowers <ne...@neilb.org> Cc: Perl5 Porters <perl5-port...@perl.org> On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 12:34 PM Neil Bowers <ne...@neilb.org> wrote: > > I'm writing this email in my capacity as a PAUSE admin. > > As many of you will be aware, we have a process which is triggered when a CPAN author passes away. There are a number of actions, but one is to mark all of their distributions as available for adoption. If you look at ZEFRAM's author page on MetaCPAN (https://metacpan.org/author/ZEFRAM) you'll see there are 75 distributions. > > When a distribution is available for adoption, the PAUSE admins should consider the river position of a distribution, the experience of people asking for ownership, and any other relevant factors. At one of the PTS[1] gatherings, we also agreed that for far-upriver distributions, the admins should be proactive to find a new maintainer (e.g. from the pool of people who rely on a distribution, or who are already maintaining a similar or complementary distribution), and not just assign it to the first person who requests it. > > And if a distribution includes one or more core modules, then P5P comes into play. For example, Math::Complex is a core module, and ZEFRAM was the last person to do a CPAN release, in 2012. Where a module has P5P with the first-come indexing permission, then it's the responsibility of the PSC to decide co-maints, not the PAUSE admins. > > One module that stands out is Module::Runtime, which isn't a core module, but is one of our keystone distributions. There are more than 10k CPAN distributions which depend on this. The last release was in 2017, and while there is no immediate urgency, it would be good to find a new maintainer. > > It would be good to hand this over to a new maintainer, but there's no rush. A reminder that if you're interested in adopting a distribution, the first step is usually to contact the current maintainer. But if you can't, or if the previous maintainer has marked it as available for adoption, then you should email the PAUSE admins: modules@perl.org > > Neil > > [1] Perl Toolchain Summit I would like to take over Module::Runtime. My main concern is keeping it stable and working, but I do have some improvements in mind. In particular, I would like to switch it away from Module::Build to just use ExtUtils::MakeMaker, to reduce the dependencies of such a high river module. I would also set x_static_install in the metadata to further optimize install time where possible. There are some open issues on RT that I would like to fix, including one that Zefram had planned to address (https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=116305). There is also one addition that I would like to make. A function that behaves like use_package_optimistically, but returns a value indicating if it was able to require the module or not. I believe I have a proven track record of maintaining important stable modules, and would be a suitable person to take over an important module like this.
