JSAN Project Aims to Become Focal Point for the JavaScript Community

"CPAN".replace(/CP/, "JS")

JavaScriptSearch
Friday, May 12, 2006; 03:06 AM

A project that has been running since July 2005 is attracting contributors in order to create a public repository of modular JavaScript code.  JSAN is trying to become for the JavaScript community what CPAN.org is for Perl programmers.  The project website is available at http://openjsan.org .

The inspiration for the idea - CPAN, stands for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. It is a large archive of software written in Perl, as well as documentation for it.  Currently CPAN holds 2.5 gigabytes of code and documentation

Its JavaScript analogue JSAN operates in similar fashion by providing the infrastructure in terms of web presense, servers, and support, while the coding community provides JSAN with "distributions", or sourcecode files.  All code contributed to JSAN is open source.

The stated mission of JSAN is to "bring the joy of collaborative open source development embraced by Perl developers through the CPAN to JavaScript, a unique and independent programming language with potential in all areas of modern development."  The project is supported by a ten-person team that includes Brendan Eich - the creator of the JavaScript programming language, Casey West - developer of the JSAN library for writing maintainable and modular JavaScript libraries, and Michael Schwern, who first came up with the idea writing of modular JavaScript and creating a central repository for well-written libraries.

The JSAN website.