The ghost of CPAN Days past
How many releases were done on previous CPAN Days? I know you've been dying to find out, so here are a few graphs, and I'll also compare with the top days in CPAN history. If 100 people each do one release on this coming CPAN Day (16th August, UTC), then it'd be the best CPAN Day yet. If between us we manager 151 releases, that would be the highest day ever.
CPAN and PAUSE record their timestamps in UTC, as all sane systems do. So if you're planning to release on CPAN, please take that into consideration.
The following chart shows the number of releases to CPAN on 16th August each year:
The top 3 years were 2012 (99), 2013 (75), and 2010 (66). I think we should be able to beat those. Hell, on a good day INGY can get close to that on his own, and SHARYANTO could do most of that in a coffee beak.
So how many different authors uploaded on CPAN Days?
A slightly different picture here, and the top year was 2010, when 53 different people uploaded on CPAN Day.
How does the number of releases compare to the highest days ever on CPAN, not just on CPAN Days? Here are the top 5:
2012-06-13 150
2011-10-28 124
2013-06-07 123
2008-01-16 121
2014-01-21 119
Curious that the top day is so far ahead. I wonder was there a PAUSE outage the day before?
2012-06-10 51
2012-06-11 62
2012-06-12 63
2012-06-13 150
2012-06-14 73
2012-06-15 72
2012-06-16 40
Nope. Turns out there were lots of releases in Acme that were named after the author, like:
A/AC/ACFEREN/Acme-Acferen-0.01.tar.gz
B/BD/BDFOY/Acme-BDFOY-0.01.tar.gz
B/BO/BOATES/Acme-BOATES-0.01.tar.gz
D/DE/DEMIAN/Acme-Demian-0.01.tar.gz
K/KE/KENO/Acme-KENO-0.01.tar.gz
Y/YA/YARROW/Acme-YARROW-0.01.tar.gz
My guess: it was YAPC::NA, and BDFOY was giving a tutorial?
The highest number of people releasing in a day was 24th November 2009: 74 different people uploaded 111 releases.
Anyway, back on topic: on CPAN Day this year, do one or more releases. Over the next few weeks I'll post some ideas for things you might do to existing dists. BARBIE: maybe you could finish your crazy quest by doing all your remaining releases on CPAN Day... :-)
Perl hacker since 1992.
Game on.
Ah, yes, that was a popular tutorial with many people uploading almost the same distro at the same time.
The PAUSE server reports times as GMT, which could mean the server is currently on either UTC or British Summer Time.
I confirmed that the Pause Server is using UTC by updating one of my modules. To be counted in the CPAN day stats I think a module would need to be uploaded on CPAN Day at the PAUSE Server.
Brainbuz: you're right, PAUSE records all timestamps in UTC. I've updated this and the previous CPAN Day post to note that.
That block of Acme uploads featured at 1:43 in the Map of CPAN movie :-)
Grant: that's very hypnotic to watch, and there's a very visible surge from that block of uploads!
Looks interesting ;)
I have a Task-Kensho-* release planned soon. Challenge accepted. :)
Ether: if we can get INGY to do one of his bursts of releases, we should have the raw numbers covered, and then it comes down to the number of authors.
Hmm, I didn't give the top stats for that. I'll have to fix that later!
What will really be interesting is to compare 2014 CPAN Day (which we'll about to pass) and the subsequent years. 2013 and the preceding CPAN days were not celebrated.