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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Naughty CPAN Modules 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • I've often wanted to know when people install one of my modules. Do you have a suggestion of a good way to do it? I was thinking of something like:

    local $SIG{ALARM} = sub { die "alarm" };
    alarm(5);
    print "[This question will timeout in 5 seconds and default to 'No']\n";
    my $val = eval { prompt("Send message to module author that you installed $module?", "Y") };
    $val = "N" if $@;
    if ($val =~ /^Y/i) {
         send_udp_packet_to_sergeant_dot_org();
    }

    Would that be reasonable?

    • A year or so ago I thrashed out a solution with #perl that sucked as little as possible, and was the least annoying thing we could come up with.

      http://ali.as/devel/phonehome.html [ali.as]

      Whenever anyone asks about CPAN statistics or phone home implmentations, I point them at that.

      Although I have to say adding the idea of UDP is interesting and probably would add some value to it.

      • Adam, I like the idea. I think it is well thought out and deserves to be pushed. My only suggestion, as a tip o' the hat to the FOAD crowd is that it the setting should default to 'never', not 'ask'.

        The question can be asked the next time the config process is run, but defaulting to 'ask' is wrong, since you're now adding a new hoop to jump through by default, where none existed before.

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