CPAN META.yml to DOAP Converter - Can't Be Bothered

Last year I was quite interested in the Description of a Project (DOAP) project. I added DOAP files to all my Sourceforge projects, wrote some little util scripts, contributed DOAP files to a couple of the Free software projects I use that had asked for them… and then promptly forgot all about it.

A couple of recent posts about the Python Package index and DOAP interested me enough to dig out one of my half-finished scripts, it’s the (very messy) first pass of a CPAN META.yml to DOAP converter for the automatic creation of DOAP files for perl modules. And after a little play I’m giving up. The sheer number of META.yml files that are badly formed, missing certain fields, based on previous versions of the file contents or even just empty files has surprised even the cynic in me. If I was bothered enough to have another go I’d seriously think about a two pass attempt, first the META.yml and then just mine the POD for the missing data. And hope they don’t disagree.

The point of this post? CPAN is THE perl killer app but it has so much cruft it’s scary. And to remind me to work on things I can actually survive…