The number of modules available to proto has grown considerably.
I am not aware that there is a convenient way of obtaining a short
description about each module, other than just the name?
In order to make the perl6 internet-wide environment useful, there needs
to be some form of directory information.
I think its an excellent idea that modules are held in a distributed
manner - git seems to be the preferred system at present - rather than
having a centralised depository. But this means that there needs to be a
central registory and some minimum documentation/metadata standards.
proto already has a list of modules and their locations.
Would it be possible to require that any module listed in the proto list
should also have a file METADATA in the root directory of the module's
depository? This file should contain (in pod format??) a minimum number
of sections, eg.,
SUMMARY
AUTHOR
REVISION
LICENSE
LASTUPDATE
proto inclusion already requires a dependency file, and /t and /lib
directories are provided for.
If all modules conform to a minimum metadata standard, then it would be
possible to write tools that access the proto projects.list, then access
each project and extract the metadata, dependency checking,
absence/presence of tests.
The user can then decide which modules to download with proto.
