NAME CPAN::Testers - QA of CPAN distributions via cross-platform testing SYNOPSIS With the explosive growth and increased interest in the CPAN Testers, it was felt useful to create this namespace placeholder to house the newly architected next-generation CPAN Testers stack, which is now in development. This namespace also provides for the consolidation of related work under one unified and easily identifiable umbrella. Co-maint permissions in this namespace are freely granted to anyone working on any area of the CPAN Testers infrastructure. DESCRIPTION Started in 1998 by Graham Barr and Chris Nandor, the CPAN Testers exist to provide quality assurance of CPAN distributions via cross-platform testing with many versions of perl. Some of our goals include the increase of portability of CPAN distributions and to provide authors with helpful feedback. Nowadays, it's quite effortless to get involved--even casually--with mature support for CPAN Testing with both CPAN and CPANPLUS. Testing methods ranging from manual to automatic are available. There are many distributions that comprise the CPAN Testers stack (please forgive my poor artwork). The current architecture is as follows: [POE-Component-CPAN-YACSmoke] [cpantest] | \ [CPAN-YACSmoke] \ (CPANPLUS) \ / \ [CPAN-Reporter] / \ (CPAN) / \ | / [Test-Reporter] | [SMTP] | [cpan-testers@perl.org] (Data Store) | [nntp://nntp.perl.org/perl.cpan.testers] | \ [CPAN-WWW-Testers-Generator] [cpanstats] | | [CPAN-WWW-Testers] [http://perl.grango.org/] | [http://cpantesters.perl.org/] Test::Reporter is the delivery mechanism for the test report data, as provided by one of its upstream constituents. A transport is then invoked to submit the test report to the cpan-testers@perl.org mailing list. The mailing list is the current de facto data store for the test reports. From there, web-based presentation of the reports are provided courtesy of the CPAN-WWW-Testers and CPAN-WWW-Testers-Generator distributions, and web-based statistics are provided courtesy of cpanstats. Improvements to this architecture are currently in discussion. Plans for abstracting discrete functionality (parsing, grading, transports, etc.) into separate distributions within this namespace are in progress. Additionally, we are working on an HTTP transport for the submission of test reports at the request of the perl.org folks, Adam Kennedy, and others. For more information on the CPAN Testers please visit the links below: * CPAN Testers reports * CPAN Testers statistics * The CPAN Testers Wiki * The cpan-testers mailing list * A presentation entitled "How to be a CPAN Tester" created by Barbie and David Golden * A short tutorial entitled "Become a CPAN Tester with CPAN::Reporter" created by David Golden * An article entitled "Becoming a CPAN Tester with CPANPLUS" created by Audrey Tang CAVEATS This is the second draft of this document. Undoubtedly, there may be various bits that need some adjustments. Feedback is most welcome. COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2007 Adam J. Foxson and the CPAN Testers. All rights reserved. LICENSE This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. SEE ALSO * CPANTS: The CPAN Testing Service. A related, yet distinct, project aimed at providing some sort of quality measure (called "Kwalitee") and lots of metadata for all distributions on CPAN * Special thanks to the members of the perl-qa mailing list for providing valuable insights and suggestions over the years * * * * * * * AUTHORS Adam J. Foxson , having been involved with the CPAN Testers for over half a decade, is the principal author of Test::Reporter. Thank you to David Golden and Barbie for their advice and suggestions on improving this documentation.