Script Summary: Shows the number of CPAN dependents (other modules that depend on) for each module/distribution in the CPAN search results page.
When I search CPAN, I frequently find it hard to tell which modules to choose. Unless my needs are very specialized, there can be lots of modules that do what I need. But how would I know which module is best to choose?
One factor that can help me decide is the number of CPAN dependents each module has. (Don't confuse "dependent" with "dependency"; I use the word "dependent" to mean: other modules that depend on it.) If a module has lots of other modules that depend on it, then I can be relatively certain that the module might be worth relying on.
The information about the modules' dependents is exposed by http://deps.cpantesters.org/depended-on-by.pl, which is rather cumbersome to use.
So, I created this script which dynamically shows the number of dependents for each module on the search.cpan.org search results. It then displays the list of distributions in order of their numbers of dependents.
