The first Perl 6 module on CPAN

(Update 2010-07-14: it seems that Perl 6 modules on the Perl 5 CPAN are not a good idea with the current infrastructure. See the Perl 6 Module Directory for an alternative.)

About a month ago we had a discussion about distributing Perl 6 modules, again. This time I also looked at cpan6.org and mailed Mark Overmeer about his progress and visions.

The discussion moved to the perl6-language mailing list, and I went to vacations. When I came back roughly three weeks later, there were nearly hundred messages on that subject in five different threads, and so far I didn't feel like reading it all. (Additionally my mail server went down during that time, so I didn't even have them in my mailbox).

So instead of discussing things, I started to do something: I added meta data files to my Perl 6 JSON parser and uploaded it to CPAN. I think that's the first Perl 6 module on CPAN, discounting some modules included in distributions like pugs and v6.pm.

Since the documentation is in Perl 6 Pod, search.cpan.org doesn't display it properly. So my next steps will be to find out whom I can prod to implement Perl 6 Pod rendering and indexing, or if I have to do that myself (and if yes, on which code base).

In parallel I'll try to get the proto hackers to install from tarballs, or write that myself too. In the end I'd want Perl 5 and Perl 6 modules to coexist on CPAN, presumably with the option to select packages implemented in either language for searching.