CPAN Pull Request Challenge for February: Archive::BagIt

About the challenge

See for more information my post about January.

My assignment for February

This month my assignment is Archive::BagIt. I never heard of BagIt before, but according to the Wikipedia page it is a format used by libraries to archive information and to be able to retrieve it later.

I decided to check out the module to see what it’s about. I think it’s probably a nice module if you’re in need of the BagIt format; which I’ve not been so far.

When I wrote about January’s assignment I already mentioned that typically I make pull requests because I have an itch to scratch, I run into a small bug or an issue I’d like to get solved. With this CPAN assignment I have to look for stuff that is broken or can be improved in order to make a pull request. This is also OK, but it’s just… different. It also seems to lead to a noticeably larger amount of pull requests to all cpan modules in total, which is nice!

So basically this means there is a lot of what I call ‘CPAN grooming’ going on. Many smaller improvements are being made to the modules out there on the CPAN.

When I checked out the module I noticed the code samples did not render properly on MetaCPAN.org because of issues with the POD. I found that very annoying, and decided fixing that would be my pull request. When I submitted my work to Neil, who runs the pull request challenge administration, he suggested I could do more changes, which I probably could. But then again, for me the challenge was not about making as many pull requests as possible, but to explore new modules on CPAN and see if I could keep up with this challenge. Actually, I added one more pull request just for fun. So I guess Neils strategy worked, he tricked me into it!

The ‘receiving’ end

In January, I received a pull request for the File::MimeInfo module. I maintain this module since two years or so. The PR fixed some typos in the README; I merged it. I’m still awaiting on contributions to the DBD::mysql module which was assigned both in January and in February.

My pull request colleagues

I have the idea that the communication on the mailing list and the IRC channel is not as lively as it was in January. This is only natural, because many participants had questions about the procedure and this is more clear now.

But if you have got an assignment for February and have not got around to making you contribution yet, don’t fear! you’ll have about a week left!

Next months

I’m looking forward to my next assignments. So far it’s been fun!