current-ecosystem-process

NOTES: 

1. The following comments are from my initial foray into the current Perl 6
   ecosystem and they are an attempt to help me understand my place in it as a
   module developer.  All opinions are mine and are subject to change based
   on new empirical evidence or critique by those who know the system better 
   than I.

2. The description assumes use of Github for all version control but could
   probably apply to other public version control systems as well.

3. The observations at the moment do not include looks at the internals of
   projects zef or panda.

Perl 6 Ecosystem
----------------

1. The module developer of, say, A-b::C, enters (or requests a PR) for one
   or more entries in the META.list file at https://github.com/perl6/ecosystem.

2. Each entry is a url to the raw META6.json (or, deprecated, META.info) file
   for either a released version or the curent master branch.

3. A cron job on a server (modules.perl6.org?) regularly builds or updates an
   sqlite database using code from https://github.com/perl6/modules.perl6.org. 
   That database is the canonical source for default Perl 6 module information
   for installers (currently primary candidates zef and panda).

Problems I see (in no particular order)
---------------------------------------

- The current db as displayed on the server lists only one version of each module.

- The META6.json format needs to be extended a bit to allow for other information
  needed by various client services, e.g.,

  + Distinguish between the current master branch and the latest release commit.

- The module display server on https://modules.perl6.org needs to have multiple
  pages or each module showing data for each release as well as the current master
  branch.  The display for each version should diplay the Travis build results
  for that version (an existing issue filed by ZoffixNet).

- Much of the tooling is in Perl 5 and should be converted to Perl 6 at some
  point.

- Formats and conventions for acceptable modules need to be specified where
  necessary to lighten the ecosystem maintenance burden.

- if the goal is to integrate with CPAN, module authors should be required
  to register a CPAN author name now, such name which will also be required
  to be in the META6.json file

- Much more of the system can be automated given a reasonable META6.json for
  each module's entries.

- All META.info files should be renamed to META6.json.