[Catalyst] what is easiest/best GNU/Linux/BSD distribution for Catalyst?

[David Christensen]

Krzysztof Krzyzaniak wrote:
> we are looking for someone who use stable (sarge) release and could
> make backports of done packages (and will put them into
> pkg-catalyst).

Thank you for your reply.  :-)


I'm willing to learn and help.  Please understand that I've only used GNU/Linux
packages and have not created them; I'm going to need mentoring.  Please take a
look at my home page to get an idea of my background and abilities:

    http://www.holgerdanske.com/dpchrist/


I can offer a few hours per week, and daylight (Pacific Time) non-root access to
my Sarge development box.


Please contact me off-list if you would like to get me involved.


> There is wiki (http://pkg-catalyst.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl) 
> with initial content.

More good stuff to read...  :-)


My immediate problem is finding a solid platform to develop and host Catalyst
applications on.  I have been trying to build a development machine to match my
current shared hosting provider (he.net: Slackware 9.0.0, Linux 2.4.25, Apache
2.0.54, mod_perl 1.99_09, MySQL 4.0.25, Perl 5.8.0) using Debian 3.1 stable
(Sarge) and stock packages plus CPAN, but am coming to the conclusion that this
isn't the right approach.  What I really need is something that I can apply
configuration management to, such as using the same distribution on my
development box and on the host.  A Linode virtual host looks very appealing
(http://www.linode.com/).  I've also been talking to people on the mod_perl
mailing list (http://perl.apache.org/maillist/modperl.html).  We're hoping that
a more recent Apache2/ mod_perl2 back port will be available soon
(http://www.backports.org/).


For now, it looks like I have two possibilities:

1.  Use Sarge with the apache-perl and mysql-server packages
    (Linux 2.4.27, Apache 1.3.33, mod_perl 1.29.0.2, MySQL 4.0.24,
    Perl 5.8.4).

2.  Use Alex Sayle's stuff, if available and I can understand how.


As an aside, I looked for a "system requirements" list for Catalyst, but came up
empty.  Does such exist?  If so, does someone have a URI, please?


David