CPAN

What is CPAN?

CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, is a vast online repository of reusable Perl modules that are freely available to anyone.

The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network has been online since October 1995 and now hosts well over 200,000 Perl modules. It can be searched via metacpan.org.

What does CPAN contain?

CPAN modules are authored and maintained by individual authors, organizations, and groups. For each module, CPAN holds the raw source code along with documentation, example code, and changelogs. All CPAN modules are freely available for anyone to use.

CPAN and MIDAS

When running a self-hosted edition of MIDAS, CPAN is where any additional Perl modules your installation requires can be obtained. We follow a deliberate policy of relying only on Perl's core modules wherever possible, which keeps MIDAS easy to install and minimizes the need to fetch extra dependencies from CPAN.