Introduction

This repository provides alternate index files to use CPAN modules without depending on PAUSE.

https://next-cpan.github.io/next-indexes/

Rather than using distribution tarball from PAUSE itself, next is relying on GitHub infrastructure to download distributions.

Browse the nextlist of all repositories

This repo next-indexes host some index files which can be consumed to download and install most Perl modules.

cnext is the recommended CPAN client using these indexes and GitHub repositories. You can read more about cnext client on the cnext website.

List of index files

The index files in this repository are a replacement for the traditional index file 02packages.details.txt.gz used by CPAN and most/all CPAN clients.

You can download a tarball with all the .idx files using: https://github.com/next-cpan/next-indexes/archive/p5.tar.gz

1. modules.idx
2. repositories.idx

You can also browse these files from: https://github.com/next-cpan/next-indexes/tree/p5

modules.idx

The modules.idx file lists the last available version of a module. For each module it indicates which distribution/repository provides it.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/next-cpan/next-indexes/p5/modules.idx

For every module you can know:

• the module version
• the repository(/CPAN distribution) providing this module
• the repository version # FIXME maybe useless...

{
  "version": 20200320203836,
  "columns": ["module", "version", "repository", "repository_version"],
  "data": [
    ["A1z::HTML5::Template", "0.22", "A1z-HTML5-Template", "0.22"],
    ["A1z::Html", "0.003", "A1z-Html", "0.003"],
    ["AC::MrGamoo", "1.0", "AC-MrGamoo", "1"],
    ["AC::MrGamoo::AC::FileList", 0, "AC-MrGamoo", "1"],
    ["AC::MrGamoo::AC::MySelf", 0, "AC-MrGamoo", "1"],
    ["AC::MrGamoo::AC::ReadInput", 0, "AC-MrGamoo", "1"]
  ]
}

repositories.idx

The repositories.idx file list the last available version of all CPAN distributions. Each CPAN distribution is available from a repository.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/next-cpan/next-indexes/p5/repositories.idx

For example XML-Toolkit distribution from CPAN is available on next-cpan/XML-Toolkit repository: https://github.com/next-cpan/XML-Toolkit

For each distribution you can know:

• last available version
• sha used to download the tarball using the template url
• signature of the tarball

Sample extract:

{
  "template_url": "https://github.com/next-cpan/:repository/archive/:sha.tar.gz",
  "version": 20200320203836,
  "columns": ["repository", "version", "sha", "signature"],
  "data": [
    [
      "A1z-HTML5-Template",
      "0.22",
      "01dc40b38e40f4f905bc7c902e2df08ccad22640",
      "f96dbc99fbb4dc833945c881c0f81925"
    ],
    [
      "A1z-Html",
      "0.003",
      "43484feee16a3ba360490890a203105525db91fb",
      "c54c2727eb29d7caab44d5e641491c4c"
    ],
    [
      "AC-MrGamoo",
      "1",
      "517730e24b94805eaf535b3ef4dbba9f776baaab",
      "7a598f9d71c1999063d91290f19523c5"
    ]
  ]
}

Older and TRIAL releases

older distribution versions and TRIAL releases are not indexed. We are going to use Git ID to download a custom state:

  https://github.com/next-cpan/:repository/archive/:sha.tar.gz

Example:

  https://github.com/next-cpan/:repository/archive/p5-v1.01.tar.gz 
  https://github.com/next-cpan/:repository/archive/p5-v1.02.tar.gz
  https://github.com/next-cpan/:repository/archive/p5-v1.02_01.tar.gz

How to update the indexes:

Installing dependencies:

In order to use update-index.pl you have to install first all dependencies required by the module. This can be used by installing/using App::cpanminus and the cpanfile.

curl -L https://cpanmin.us | perl - App::cpanminus
cpanm --installdeps .

Setup

Git Repository Setup

The tools are provided in the master branch, whereas the index files are contained in the p5 branch.

It's recommended to clone the repo in two different locations. One directory is going to provide the tools whereas the other will points to the index files.

# the tools
git clone git@github.com:next-cpan/next-indexes.git next-indexes

# the index location
git clone git@github.com:next-cpan/next-indexes.git next-indexes-p5
cd next-indexes-p5
git checkout -t origin/p5

settings.ini

In the next-indexes@master you will have to copy and adjust the settings.ini file.

cp settings.ini.sample settings.ini
# then adjust entries in the file

How to refresh the index

The command ./update-index.pl is going to parse all GitHub repositories for new distribution.

# refresh the index
./update-index.pl

You can also limit the number of repositories to check:

./update-index.pl --limit 5

Updating a single repository

./update-index.pl --repo A1z-Html

Perform a full update

./update-index.pl --full-update

See Also

Also consider using traditional CPAN Clients, relying on PAUSE index:

• cnext - CPAN client using next-cpan indexes
• cpan
• App::cpanminus - get, unpack, build and install modules from CPAN
• App::cpm - a fast CPAN moduler installer

Known issues

installation

Installing Crypt::SSLeay for Net::SSL on macOS

PERL_USE_UNSAFE_INC=1 perl Makefile.PL --incpath="/usr/local/Cellar/openssl@1.1/1.1.1d/include" --libpath="/usr/local/Cellar/openssl@1.1/1.1.1d/lib"

TODO

• minimal static website listing all available distribution/packages
• remove the repository_version from modules.idx
• use cnext itself instead of cpanm to install dependencies