CPAN
Ranked 6 of 9 package repositories by recommenders
Pioneering Perl module repository that made reusable libraries easy to share, and helped shape package management. Critics say module quality was uneven and dependencies could conflict.
Pioneering Perl module repository that made reusable libraries easy to share, and helped shape package management. Critics say module quality was uneven and dependencies could conflict.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 57%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Pioneering package repository for programming languages
“CPAN was legitimately one of the first package managers for a programming language that WORKED.”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” “The Perl community introduced the world to the first language module repositories via CPAN”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” “Package managers are older than some users here. From CPAN/CTAN to ports under BSD's.”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Axios Compromised on NPM – Malicious Versions Drop Remote Access Trojan” - Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?”
- Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “The Raku Foundation is born”
Hugely valuable, considered a godsend
“CPAN and similar things like CTAN were simply phenomenal in a way that really is hard to explain today”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?” “it can't be overstated how revolutionary CPAN was”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?” “CPAN was considered a godsend for a reason.”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “The C-Shaped Hole in Package Management” - Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural”
Curated, high-quality module library
“the expert community also spent a lot of effort on the AMAZING module library”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?” “CPAN's repos are highly curated and before PHP and ubiquitoous Python”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Axios Compromised on NPM – Malicious Versions Drop Remote Access Trojan”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard to install or manage
“I found add on packages easier to install than dealing with CPAN”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” “I fought cpan for two days trying to get anything to work.”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?” “nonexisting or terrible package managing - CPAN, PEAR”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Gitdot – a better GitHub. Open-source, anti-AI, and written in Rust” Uneven, sometimes low-quality modules
“the generally abysmal quality of what was in CPAN compared to what was available as third-party packages for Python”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” “they have held back some slop in CPAN”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Why Gentoo?” Dependencies conflict and confuse users
“if you used any CPAN dependencies, you soon had 3 incompatible object systems, 4 type systems, 5 exception systems”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “What Killed Perl?” “Perl developers started learning the hard way that CPAN isn't the Perl standard library”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Deprecate like you mean it”
Other package repositories people recommend
The four most recommended other package repositories, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nixpkgs | 38 | 22 | 63% | 11 | — | — |
| Arch User Repository | 34 | 74 | 31% | 5 | — | — |
| Arch User Repository | 20 | 23 | 47% | 10 | — | — |
| crates.io | 17 | 18 | 49% | 9 | — | — |
| CPANThis page | 13 | 10 | 57% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
23 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“CPAN itself as an idea was way ahead of its time.”
“nonexisting or terrible package managing - CPAN, PEAR”
“they have held back some slop in CPAN”
“This never happened under CPAN/CTAN.”
“CPAN's repos are highly curated and before PHP and ubiquitoous Python”
“Package managers are older than some users here. From CPAN/CTAN to ports under BSD's.”
“it took ~2 months for someone to look at and accept.”
“CPAN was considered a godsend for a reason.”
“Perl developers started learning the hard way that CPAN isn't the Perl standard library”
“without it Perl would likely be like awk”
“The Perl community introduced the world to the first language module repositories via CPAN”
“CPAN was legitimately one of the first package managers for a programming language that WORKED.”
“I found add on packages easier to install than dealing with CPAN”
“the generally abysmal quality of what was in CPAN compared to what was available as third-party packages for Python”
“I fought cpan for two days trying to get anything to work.”
“CPAN and similar things like CTAN were simply phenomenal in a way that really is hard to explain today”
“A solution to the weirdest problem, just a package away.”
“I second your perplexity on perl 6 vs CPAN.”
“the expert community also spent a lot of effort on the AMAZING module library”
“if you used any CPAN dependencies, you soon had 3 incompatible object systems, 4 type systems, 5 exception systems”
“it helped me take on much more of an "engineering" mindset”
“it can't be overstated how revolutionary CPAN was”
“At the time, CPAN was revolutionary: a big, centralized repo of open-source libraries”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.