| A few comments: * It is often recommended to use cpanminus[1] instead of the CPAN.pm module. But it is up to the distribution you try to install to declare it's dependencies correctly. Not doing that is a bug. * If you use cpanminus you can use the --notest flag to skip tests. But tests are a feature. * Software have bugs. Reporting them when they are found is how software get less bugs. * Cpan distributions should not[2] use external binaries (and exceptions should be clearly documented and motivated). * The ease of use of regexes in Perl is not an argument for not documenting them (and in this case) the document format they are meant to parse. * There are several different data dumpers. No assumption on the user's preference is made. * If you use a newer Perl (5.12+) you get strict enabled automatically[3], and also (depending on which version your code requires) some new features. Due to backwards compatibility it is not possible for newer Perls to enable strict or warnings implicitly. The Perl of today is also vastly improved since the 1990s, hopefully you will come across some modern perl too. [1] https://metacpan.org/pod/App::cpanminus [2] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt [3] https://metacpan.org/pod/release/JESSE/perl-5.12.0/pod/perl5... |
In the CPAN case, if cpanminus is the "good one", then it should be installed by default and CPAN.pm needs to tell you to use that instead or just be deprecated. I don't want 5 choices in package managers, I just want the good one. :)