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CPAN Statistics

Content

CPAN Numbers

Authors

COUNTNOTES
2120Total registered PAUSE accounts
6133Active Authors - have uploaded at least one distribution
-4013Inactive Authors - have uploaded no distributions

Distributions

COUNTNOTES
31829Total Unique Distributions on CPAN & BACKPAN
27767Total Unique Distributions on CPAN
4062Total Unique Distributions deleted from CPAN (i.e. on BACKPAN ONLY)
200538Total Distribution Releases on CPAN & BACKPAN
92000Total Distribution Releases on CPAN
108538Total Distribution Releases deleted from CPAN (i.e. on BACKPAN ONLY)

CPAN Milestones

Distributions

CountTimestampPAUSEDistribution-Version
50002002-09-28 19:40:37JPEACOCKversion-0.18
100002005-02-22 22:01:39AMBSAcme-Bundle-SCHUBIGER-0.01
150002007-05-11 03:36:35RJBSConfig-INI-Reader-0.003
200002009-04-03 10:16:00GWYNConvert-zBase32-0.0100
250002010-12-23 01:37:14RENEEBPerl-Critic-OTRS-0.01
300002012-09-23 21:57:00BGPMONBGPmon-CPM-1-00
320822013-05-20 09:07:15FGZArchive-Probe-0.8

Uploads

CountTimestampPAUSEDistribution-Version
100002000-11-08 17:58:48STBEYMath-BigIntFast-6.0
200002002-07-18 17:18:14MTHURNWWW-Search-AltaVista-2.07
300002003-08-25 12:51:28GUNNARCGI-ContactForm-1.15
400002004-07-16 04:26:49ROSULEKClass-Tables-0.28
500002005-06-01 03:32:09TWHBio-GMOD-0.023
600002006-03-13 18:41:40VPARSEVALList-MoreUtils-0.19
700002006-12-29 20:42:30PMQSIO-Compress-Base-2.002
800002007-09-21 19:13:46MBARBONOpenOffice-UNO-0.04
900002008-04-14 09:28:19GAASlibwww-perl-5.811
1000002008-11-01 22:23:01EXOBUZZMediaWiki-API-0.18
1100002009-05-04 10:42:06PMQSCompress-Raw-Bzip2-2.019
1200002009-10-28 03:41:29RJBSPod-Elemental-Transformer-WikiDoc-0.093001
1300002010-04-04 17:04:25AYATESData-Predicate-1.0.2
1400002010-09-21 08:33:00DMAKIGeo-Hash-XS-0.00013
1500002011-02-25 18:07:06FLORATie-RefHash-1.39
1600002011-08-08 16:01:43BOSTONTest-More-Behaviour-0.3.0
1700002012-02-05 01:05:16BAREFOOTDebuggit-2.01_03
1800002012-07-14 14:21:18BILLHAILSLang-Tree-Builder-0.1
1900002012-12-20 21:16:29OLIVERApp-Netdisco-2.00_011
2000002013-05-14 02:27:52SHARYANTOBusiness-ID-NOPPBB-0.03
2005382013-05-20 15:09:08MGRIMESModule-Build-Pluggable-PDL-0.22

Uploaders

CountTimestampPAUSEDistribution-Version
10002001-05-11 09:49:29IAMCALFUSE-Server-1.00
20002003-08-07 17:20:20CORUSCATEAcme-CurrentYesterday-0.01
30002005-12-05 10:42:22WILLERTCatalyst-Model-EmailStore-0.01
40002008-04-11 05:18:45ARTHURParse-Stallion-0.005
50002010-08-31 19:13:28MCAUDILLNet-Bot-IRC-NumericCodes-0.01
60002013-02-07 04:11:03WETERSText-CSV-Easy-0.01
61332013-05-20 09:07:15FGZArchive-Probe-0.8

What Was the First?

Back in 1995 a few core Perl developers had started to write some code and wanted to release it to the world. There were a handful of repositiories, but Jarkko Hietaniemi had the idea to bring these together into a consistent set of distributions, perls and scripts across all repositories, providing a mirrored network of repositories. It took a while, but eventually it came together into what we now know as CPAN.

Speaking to Andreas König, it transpires that PAUSE started sometime between 15th and 20th August 1995. Andreas collected together 35 distributions from several different servers, and the Master PAUSE server was live. On 21st June 1995 Tim Bunce published The Perl 5 Module List, which details these early modules, although includes those that were included within Perl core as well as addition distributions.

As Andreas notes, "Unfortunately I have no archives that would fill the gap between perl 5alpha1 and the start of Pause. But there were these 35 modules and many more releases and there was no "first" that I could name. Perl 5alpha came with plenty of modules, they provided the critical mass to spur the community to add more and so they did -- instantly."

Having said that, if you wanted to hang your hat on a "first" release, according to the BACKPAN/CPAN timestamps, the first that is recorded within the current repositories is 'Symdump-1.20.tar.gz', released by one ANDK, on 16 Aug 1995 @ 9:12:18am.

For a more detailed history of Perl, please see the Perl Timeline

My thanks to Brian Cassidy for being the first to ask this, thus prompting me to write this addendum before anyone else thought to ask ;)