[Melbourne-pm] Deploying perl web applications to end users

[Scott Penrose]

On 17/01/2006, at 22:40, David Dick wrote:

> For a while now, i've been building an application at home as a  
> testing
> ground for a lot of ideas that i can use for my job.  It's a perl web
> application with a database backend, so fairly basic stuff.
>
> I'm at a stage where i think i might be only a couple of years out  
> from
> having a product that actually does something useful :$ so i'm  
> thinking
> about deployment to potential customers.
>
> Two possibilities here (afaik) that boil down to the same issue  
> (afaik).
>   Possibility one is customer installs on a local machine.  Issue:  
> need
> to ensure a quick, easy install to make sure s/he actually uses the
> software.  Possibility two is we admin server farms for the  
> application.
>   Issue, need to ensure quick, easy install to remove the  
> possibility of
> stuff ups.

Two things to review. TWIKI has a untar, go to URL type installation.
But if you want to be really transparent, try considering PAR - Think  
TAR or JAR only Perl - it is designed to distribute an entire system  
in a single file, you could even have multiple versions of the code  
installed there, and it allows data files to be included.

Tell us how you go, because this is definitely an issue. One of my  
problems is that CPAN asks too many questions - I can't remember the  
time I didn't just press ENTER on any question. This is a problem  
that Debian has on install too - and is starting to be realised by  
the community.

CPAN is trying to fix this though with the META files, so that a tree  
of dependencies can be built in advance, rather than one node at a  
time, like it currently is.

Good luck

Scott
-- 
* - *  http://www.osdc.com.au - Open Source Developers Conference * - *
Scott Penrose
Open source developer
http://linux.dd.com.au/
scottp at dd.com.au

Dismaimer: Open sauce usually ends up never coming out (of the bottle).

Please do not send me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

Microsoft is not the answer. It's the question. And the answer is no.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/melbourne-pm/attachments/20060117/b50a2aad/PGP.bin