Bug #67705 for CPAN-Changes: No way to meet the spec if a release date is unknown

Fri Apr 22 16:33:38 2011 DOHERTY [...] cpan.org - Ticket created

Subject:

No way to meet the spec if a release date is unknown

Some modules have a long history, some of which might be lost. If a release date isn't known, then leaving it blank, or saying 'unknown' will cause the test to fail. While providing a year would suffice, sometimes even that isn't known. Some solution should be provided.

Tue Apr 26 07:08:07 2011 bricas [...] cpan.org - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Fri May 06 11:36:39 2011 bricas [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

I think you're right, here. It may be that we need to make the release date totally optional. It might be nice to have a couple of textual equivalents to that as well, i.e. "Not Released" or some such. Thoughts?

Fri May 06 17:15:01 2011 DOHERTY [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

On Fri May 06 11:36:39 2011, BRICAS wrote: Show quoted text

> I think you're right, here. > > It may be that we need to make the release date totally optional. It > might be nice to have a couple of textual equivalents to that as well, > i.e. "Not Released" or some such. > > Thoughts?

I think valid alternatives to a real date are: - it wasn't released => m/(?:not|un-?)released/i or something - release date unknown, or estimated => Allow estimates as coarse as one year, and also allow m/unknown/i or maybe even blank. I would probably say that *something* has to go there, and you should provide some information if you can. So, if you don't know the release date, then say "unknown" at a minimum or "unknown; estimated: June 1997" if you can make a guess. The estimated date should follow the same format as an exact release date, save the lack of precision.

Mon May 16 09:31:28 2011 bricas [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

On Fri May 06 18:15:01 2011, DOHERTY wrote: Show quoted text

> I think valid alternatives to a real date are: > - it wasn't released => m/(?:not|un-?)released/i or something > - release date unknown, or estimated => Allow estimates as coarse as > one year, and also allow m/unknown/i or maybe even blank. I would > probably say that *something* has to go there, and you should provide > some information if you can. So, if you don't know the release date, > then say "unknown" at a minimum or "unknown; estimated: June 1997" if > you can make a guess. The estimated date should follow the same format > as an exact release date, save the lack of precision.

Release dates are already in W3CDTF, so you can put just "1997-06" if you don't know the exact day -- even just the year is acceptable per the specification. With that in mind, I think this addition to the spec needs to be limited to releases that were either A) Not released (or publicly released for whatever reason) or B) released but the date is totally unknown To that end, I've decided to do the following: * release date will be optional * textual equivalents for having no release date will be: "unknown", "unknown release date", "not released", "development release" This should cover the most common situations.

Fri Jul 19 16:59:33 2013 NEILB [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

I think 'unknown' would be good to support. In patching various Changes files, I'm seeing developer releases with no date against them, and developer releases don't seem to make it to backpan, so I can't find the date (which I do otherwise). Neil

Mon Jul 29 23:45:43 2013 bricas [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Fixed in version 0.21.

Mon Jul 29 23:45:44 2013 bricas [...] cpan.org - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'