[tpm] RFI: Installing Catalyst::* and all dependencies on WinXPPro , has anyone succeeded / failed? It looks huge

[Stuart Watt]

On 5/31/2010 12:52 PM, J Z Tam wrote:
> Mongeren,
>    This Catalyst::*  package space looks huge and I don't have high confidence in WindowsXPPro.  So if someone's got the cheatsheet for known-working WinTel platforms, please share tips, traps, gotchas.
> TIA  /jordan
>    
Yes, it does work well, even on XP/Windows. I use a MinGW self-built 
Perl, and I removed fork(), which means I get a few test errors from 
some of the Test::WWW::Mechanize stuff, but I usually force those 
modules. Here are a few thoughts.

1. Strawberry Professional should have all (most of) you need, so that 
might be an option
2. Catalyst is very dependent on Moose, if you can't get Moose running, 
then you can forget Catalyst
3. If you get that far, try installing Catalyst::Runtime - yes there are 
many dependencies but most are simple and reliable.
4. The rest depends on which components you use. I tend to use 
Catalyst::View::TT, Catalyst::View::JSON, Catalyst::Model::Adaptor, and 
Catalyst::Model::DBIC::Schema. These will need DBI and a DBD, but that's 
enough for a minimal application.

Traps: a few test errors might well happen on Windows and I tend to 
check the code and judiciously ignore issues that appear not to be 
relevant. Having said that, I've managed to compile Perl and built 
Catalyst on it four times, ranging from 5.8 to 5.12, and it's all been 
fairly straightforward in the end. We have far more problems with XML 
parsers and other stuff.

We're working on 64-bit. The MinGW64 build does kind of work, but needs 
more stability. So for now we're sticking with 32-bit stuff.

The other "gotcha" is hosting. We use FastCGI on IIS in production, 
mostly because our clients insist on it. This is possible, but IIS has a 
few issues. IIS5 doesn't work great yet, and I have a patch for this, 
but haven't had a chance to test it on IIS7 before committing into 
Catalysrt::Runtime. IIS6 works well, but you'll need the C/XS module 
FCGI for that.

Catalyst does have a start-up lag on Windows. Normally, you would use 
preforking on UNIX systems to cache a prepared process. Windows emulates 
fork() and I've not tested this out that well. I'd be nervous about this 
on Windows, but using multiple worker processes works fine for FastCGI. 
Once your processes are started, Catalyst's performance is really pretty 
good - even on Windows.

The Catalyst mailing list is good but a little twitchy, especially if 
people ask questions really belonging to DBIx::Class (which is really 
underneath Catalyst::Model::DBIC::Schema). They like people prepared to 
contribute, but are very sensitive about criticism.

The positive: where I worked used to use ActiveState and it's "PerlEx" 
crappy clone of Apache::Register/mod_perl. FastCGI works *very* well for 
us, giving us very reasonable performance, even considering a lot of 
hosting options (e.g., preforking) are not anything like as easy on 
Windows. As a previous Java+Spring user, Catalyst has a very similar set 
of advantages, and has been invaluable upgrading an old system, as we 
managed to embed legacy components by wrapping them.

All the best
Stuart