On Thu, 16 Mar 2017 12:42:38 +0100
Catonano <catonano@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to try to package this thing
>
> http://search.cpan.org/~ken/xls2csv-1.07/
>
> but

Short answer: The cpan importer is currently not equipped to handle
script-packages like this one.

>
> $ guix import cpan xls2csv
> guix import: error: failed to download meta-data for package 'xls2csv'

This is because "xls2csv" has no metadata on metacpan.org

> Efraim suggested me caps and colons, like the example in the manual
>
> guix import cpan Acme::Boolean
>
> But Acme-Boolean is a package.
>
> There's a folder named Acme containing a file with a namespace declaration
> in it
>
> My thing is not a package, it's a script, it has no namespace declaration,
> it's not in a folder

Is this common on CPAN?  Do you think it would be useful to improve the
cpan importer to handle such things?

>
> How do I correctly call the importer on this ?

It can't work, yet.  You'll need to declare the package manually.
Sorry.