About rt.cpan.org

What is this all about?

This site provides a queue to track feature requests and bug reports in every distribution released through CPAN. Some distributions track issues elsewhere and that is noted here as well.

See the quick usage guidelines if you want to know how to use this site. These guidelines are also on the login page.

Recommendations (soft rules)

For reporters

Be polite

Are maintainers required to act on all bugs reported by end users?

No. They are not. Unless you have an outside contractual relationship with a maintainer, you need to assume that they are a volunteer. Telling them they "must" do something is impolite and counterproductive.

Should maintainers accept bug reports against older versions of a module?

In general, we discourage bug reports against older versions of modules other than for historical reporting purposes (i.e. resolved immediately upon report with a note that it's been tested and found to work in the current version.)

If a bug exists in the current CPAN version of a module, please do report the bug.

For authors and maintainers

Be polite

Can a module have its own bug tracker?

Sure it can, but that does not disable the module's RT queue and users can still create tickets on rt.cpan.org.

What is used to power this service?

All parts used to build this service are open source software. The core is Request Tracker from Best Practical Solutions. Everything else is either an extension for this site or a module from the CPAN.

rt.cpan.org has some customizations which tie it to a particular RT version; at this moment (March 2021) it's RT 5.0.

You can explore the source code by checking out the repository:

    git clone git://github.com/bestpractical/rt-extension-rt_cpan_org.git

or by going to its web page, at RT-Extension-rt_cpan_org. There is a script in the bin directory of the extension that installs everything.

Have a question about this service?

If you have any questions about rt.cpan.org, feel free to send us mail and we'll do our best to get back to you.