About grep::metacpan

grep::metacpan is an open source search engine for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN), an ever growing archive of code and documentation for the Perl programming language. This includes a comfortable web-based view and a first class mirror of the canonical CPAN content.

This is Yet Another project for searching the CPAN.

This is not the first attempt to provide a grep through all CPAN distributions, but we hope you'll find it helpful. You should also try the original grep.cpan.me which uses a Redis database as backend.

This project is purely experimental. The goal is to see how 'git grep' can compete with a more traditional database approach. One of its main advantages is that it's easy to deploy on a standalone server/workstation. The drawback is that it can be *slow*... but you might be surprised by how fast it can be for some searches. :-) The more frequently a term is searched for, the faster the grep for that term gets.

Using grep::metacpan

You can consume grep::metacpan in two different ways:

Read more about how the code is organized by reading our GitHub repositories introduction.

(grep::)?MetaCPAN is a community effort. The original idea came about when Todd R. was working on the 'dot removal from @INC' (and grep.cpan.me wasn't available at that particular time).

Help wanted

We are always in need of more contributors, so feel free to submit merge request to one of our source code repositories.

The logo was stolen from metacpan, which came from Raul Matei who won the MetaCPAN logo competition (sponsored by the Enlightened Perl Organization) with his entry.
Babs V. kindly provided an altered version for this grep::metacpan website :-)