Perl really needs a Major Release that breaks backwards compatibility. Then all string oriented operations can default to utf8. And all of the cool new features can be turned on by default. Old features can be moved to compatibility modules or pragma to enable a smoother transition.
The rest of what you're talking about would be some sort of distribution on top of next generation Perl5. You might want to look at DWIM Perl (dwimperl.com) which is already bundling a huge set of popular modules.
]]>Before I move my modules to github, I would like to hear what the people who operate the CPANTesters and CPAN and manage its software, and the two indexing sites think.
]]>As a related aside I don't like RTCPAN. Even though I've started specifying an alternate bugtracker in my recent releases, tickets still get submitted through rtcpan. The makers of BitBucket provide the (high end) JIRA ticketing system to apache httpd. Both BitBucket and GitHub provide a more basic ticketing system for each project for free as well.
]]>If you like this idea and your local PerlMongers is overdue for a meeting, sieze the Chopsticks of Destiny. You can use this announcement as a starting point.
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Several People have been blogging at blogs.perl.org about CPAN Day on
August 14. Standard Tap have offered their dining room for our use.
The Standard Tap has wi-fi but there are also several xfinity and verizon
hotspots there, so bring your laptop. While the meeting won't be the
perfect opportunity for creating awesome new cpan modules it is a great
time for light maintenance and documentation.
Don't have any modules to work on? Don't fret, you can always proofread
someone else's work. You can also look at http://neilb.org/adoption/ for
modules that are be available for adoption (the list is auto generated it
includes many modules that don't need a new maintainer). You can also work
on patches to other peoples modules.
The Standard Tap is at Second and Poplar in Philadelphia.
We have a reservation for 6:00PM on Thursday August 14.
CPAN Day officially ends at 8:00 PM EDT because the CPAN servers are
currently 4 hours ahead of us (UTC). That gives 2 hours of PM meeting to
upload your code. When I first floated this idea I suggested meeting the
day before because of this, but we'll still have two hours in which we can
upload.