The META files (META.yml and META.json) included in the CPAN distributions provide well structured information about the distribution. Thing such as the dependencies of the distribution and the list of modules the distribution provides.

MetaCPAN uses the data in these files to provide a searchable index of all the CPAN distributions.

Among the many things it displays the license of the distribution based on the information in the META file. It can link to the "homepage" of the distribution if that is available, it can direct the readers to the preferred bug-tracking system of the author and even link to the version control system used by the author.

Having this information in a distribution is quite useful, so that's the first thing we are going to add.

For this we only have to change the Makefile.PL. There are two separate articles showing how to do this for the other packaging systems used by CPAN authors:

How to convince Meta CPAN to show a link to the version control system of a distribution? and How to add the license field to the META.yml and META.json files on CPAN?

The specific change I made are these:

Set the license field in the CPAN META files

( $ExtUtils::MakeMaker::VERSION >= 6.3002
? ( 'LICENSE' => 'perl' )
: () ),

Link to GitHub, Link to bug tracking system, link to homepage

(eval { ExtUtils::MakeMaker->VERSION(6.46) } ? (
META_MERGE => {
    'meta-spec' => { version => 2 },
    resources => {
        repository => {
            type       => 'git',
            url        => 'http://github.com/szabgab/Pod-Tree.git',
            web        => 'http://github.com/szabgab/Pod-Tree',
        },
        bugtracker => {
            web        => 'http://github.com/szabgab/Pod-Tree/issues',
        },
        homepage   => 'http://metacpan.org/pod/Pod::Tree',
    },
} ) : ())

commit

After this I could release version 1.19 of Pod::Tree. Shortly after uploading the new version I'll be able to verify if I have added the fields correctly and if MetaCPAN uses this data. After less than a day I will also start to receive reports from the CPAN Testers which is not relevant now, but that's another good reason to release versions frequently.

commit