Adopting DateTime::Calendar::Pataphysical
Adopting another DateTime module, borderline Acme::: DateTime::Calendar::Pataphysical.
This is mostly inspired by the CPAN curation trend NEILB is setting. The process is very straightforward:
- find a module that has been neglected (old tickets in RT, CPANTS failures, latest release being a few years old, etc. The adoption candidates report can help with this)
- contact the author to get co-maint
- fix what's broken
- ship it
The first thing to realize is that it's actually very easy. Not just the administrative bit of getting in touch with the author and obtaining co-maint status, but also actually fixing the issues. This is usually pretty stable code you're dealing with. Sometimes the tickets even have a patch attached. You basically have more free time than the original author has now, and are giving it away to make CPAN a better place.
This probably works even better if you're already a user of the module, or if you have some interest in the topic at hand. Here's how I claimed I was the right person to handle DateTime-Calendar-Pataphysical:
While browsing around metcpan, I stumbled upon DateTime-Calendar-Pataphysical which seems to need a little love (a POD error, and some warnings issued because it's using a deprecated DateTime method).
I'd be interested in fixing those minor issues and doing a new release.
If the above is not convincing enough, I can always claim I used to be a member of the 'Collège (look for "Sous-Commission du Pain à Cornes"): http://www.college-de-pataphysique.org/Sous_Commissions/sous_comm_files/widget0_markup.html
Within 7 hours I had co-maint status. Doing an actual release took a little more time mostly because I'm playing silly games.
Pink.
Borderline?
Well, it's a silly calendar, but it works just fine.
I was actually surprised at the complexity of the code, given how precisely it maps to the usual Gregorian calendar. I briefly thought about rewriting it as a subclass of DateTime (i.e. Gregorian), before realizing that if it wasn't broke, I really didn't need to fix it.