Hi!
Please send your bug report it to the official contact/author address for
the module in question (or send it to rt.cpan.org@schmorp.de, that's fine
as well). What follows is the rationale for this request, you don't have
to read it if you don't care.
Why is this necessary?
rt.cpan.org has many deficiencies which makes it tedious and hard to use,
increasing the workload on the people who provide all the perl modules you
probably appreciate (and that is really to be avoided - module authors
should be able to invest all their time into improving their modules and
not fighting with rt.cpan.org's bugs).
Still, for some people, rt.cpan.org is useful to have, and some people
even like it and really want to use it. That is fine, too.
Unfortunately, the designers of rt.cpan.org didn't make their "service"
optional - you can neither opt-in nor opt-out of rt.cpan.org as a module
author.
Just like a spammer, rt.cpan.org forces its "service" (whether wanted
or unwanted) on everybody. Just like a spammer, they don't care for the
people they actively hurt. Just like a spammer, they don't don't care to
fix these issues and make their "service" ethically acceptable.
You cannot even configure it to redirect tickets to somewhere else.
Unfortunately, ignoring rt.cpan.org is not an option either: for people
reporting possible bugs there is no indication that their report will
be ignored, and for module authors it means they miss potentially vital
bug reports such as yours (and of course it's a great impression if
rt.cpan.org has lots of bug reports that are unanswered, making a module
look unmaintained when in fact the opposite might be true).
I am sorry that this wasted a bit of your time, but please understand that
I am just as much a victim as you are - the problem is the unethical stance
of the rt.cpan.org providers who force their "service" on everybody.
Please redirect your bug report as stated in the beginning of this mail,
and please consider petitioning the rt.cpan.org providers to stop their
unethical behaviour and allow opt-in, opt-out, or some redirect option.
One last issue: many people mail me that this can be "fixed" by including
the bugtracker element in my module meta file.
This is not true:
1. This field only affects search.cpan.org and maybe similar services.
(Many people confuse rt.cpan.org with search.cpan.org for some reason).
2. It doesn't even work (there are still links to rt.cpan.org displayed).
3. Even if search.cpan.org does no longer display the link, it doesn't
actually affect rt.cpan.org (and tests have shown that people go
to rt.cpan.org regardless)
Even *iff* rt.cpan.org would start listening on the bugtracker field,
however, it's still wrong. I have a lot of modules, and each time a
service like rt.cpan.org comes out, I would have to make dummy releases
for all my modules. This not only creates a lot of extra work for me (I
take releases very seriously) but also users, who would wonder why there
is a new release.
Thanks a lot,
Marc Lehmann <rt.cpan.org@schmorp.de>
Last updated: 2012-04-22
