This is the third in a series of articles about MetaCPAN. The first article described the two main parts that make up the MetaCPAN project, the API and the search interface. The second article gave a high level summary of how the API uses Elasticsearch to hold and search information about CPAN distributions and authors.

In this post we'll look at how MetaCPAN links to other parts of the CPAN ecosystem, how the physical setup has changed with MetaCPAN v1, and another service that v1 has made available.

This post is brought to you by Booking.com, our second platinum sponsor. Booking.com is one of the largest Perl shops in the world, and have done a lot to support our community over the years. Thank you to Booking.com for supporting meta::hack.

This is the second in a series of articles, which we're writing to celebrate meta::hack, our first MetaCPAN hackathon, which is currently (Nov 17th through 21st) taking place in Chicago.

This hackathon was by invitation only, since it had a very specific goal: completing migration of the live service to MetaCPAN v1 (which includes a major Elasticsearch upgrade, from 0.20 to 2.4, or nearly 70 stable releases forward). Once that's done, any remaining time will be spent fixing bugs, and discussing what comes next. The attendees are Olaf Alders (founder of MetaCPAN), Mickey Nasriachi, Leo Lapworth, Tom Sibley, Joel Berger, Doug Bell, Brad Lhotsky and Zach Dykstra. Matt Trout is contributing remotely.

This post is brought to you by cPanel, a platinum sponsor for meta::hack. cPanel are a well-known user and supporter of Perl, and we're very grateful for their support. More about cPanel at the end of this article.

This week a small group of dedicated Perl developers are gathering in Chicago for meta::hack, the first MetaCPAN hackathon. The primary goal is to complete the transition to Elasticsearch v2, a major undertaking that was started more than a year ago.

Because all the participants are volunteers, this was only possible with sponsorship. Over the next few days we'll be sharing information about MetaCPAN and the work going on, and acknowledging some of the key sponsors.

This post is brought to you by FastMail, a gold sponsor for meta::hack. FastMail is a stalwart supporter of the Perl community — they also sponsored the QA Hackathon this year.

This post was originally going to be an exhortation to potential speakers, to take the plunge and submit a proposal to the London Perl Workshop. I thought I could list some generic types of talks.

Then I realised I'm not entirely sure what kind of talks everyone is going to want to attend. So instead, I'm asking you, particularly if you're going to be at the LPW:

What talks would you be interested in attending?

Lessons learned developing modules? Comparisons of similar modules? How to use specific modules (which ones?)? Do's and Don'ts when developing with Perl (frameworks)? Experiences transitioning from Perl 5 to Perl 6, or vice versa?

Please add comments with the kind of talks you're interested in, as that might encourage people to submit talk proposals.