[Catalyst] Is it normal to have lots of trouble installing catalyst?

[John Napiorkowski]

I'm sorry if I sound a bit pissy and frustrated, but
if you go to http://www.catalyst.org I am specifically
told on the landing page:

"Catalyst went right in without a question or a
dependency to follow (might be I just happened to have
everything underneath; OS X 10.2). Had the skeleton of
an app set up and running with the built-in server in
30 seconds."

Also in every piece of advocacy I have ever seen
regarding this project I am told getting going with
Catalyst is as easy as "perl -MCPAN -e 'install
Task::Catalyst' so please don't tell me I am supposed
to use some other installation method that you need to
Google to even discover it exists.

As far as CPAN being for "people who know how to use
it" I have to say that I've been developing
applications on Perl using CPAN for 10 years and
although I am not a guru like Larry or Damian or
others I feel I know how to use Perl to work.  I've
installed dozens of CPAN modules in my time, including
some tricky ones that required compiling and system
configuration.  In any case CPAN is widely spoken of
as one of the main reasons to use Perl.  I have never
heard CPAN spoken of for experts only, although
certainly some modules are known to be more
troublesome to install.

I am concerned that we currently have a process that
is going to turn off anyone not already dedicated to
using perl and very motivated to learn how to use this
framework.  I am personally very motivated to use
Catalyst and I want to master it and then pass on that
knowledge to other newcomings.  I would like to focus
on trying to get to the root of the problem and I am
willing to spend a good part of my working day today
to try to help.

I realize people are working very hard on Catalyst and
when some newbie like me complains it can cause some
hard feelings.  I've tried very hard to be sensitive
to this.  If the catalyst website said to expect
installation would be troublesome then you wouldn't be
hearing from me at all.  But because everywhere I
looked I was told it would be easy and when I spent
days trying to install it I thought there might be
something really wrong that I am doing.  So I turned
to you all for some thoughts about it.  As it turns
out I am not the only one having this trouble.  So I
am going to try and install Catalyst from scratch on a
clean install of Perl and log everything I do and all
the errors I get.  That way with some RubyOnRails
developer decides to give Catalyst a try they get it
running the first time and this project can increase
it's momentum.

--john

--- Sebastian Riedel <sri at oook.de> wrote:

> 
> 08.02.2006 05:37 John Napiorkowski:
> 
> > As I am on Ubuntu I am really tempted to use the
> stuff
> > I am finding on
> > "http://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-catalyst/"
> > which seems pretty up to date
> 
> Exactly!!! We have packages for most linux
> distributions and ports  
> for *bsd.
> CPAN.pm/CPANPLUS is for those that know how to use
> it and why.
> 
> > but I'd really like to
> > help out solving the installing from CPAN(PLUS)
> thing,
> > since that is what all the advocacy is talking
> about.
> 
> Who?
> 
> > Right now Catalyst is nowhere as easy to setup and
> get
> > programming as is Zope or RubyonRails (and is
> about as
> > difficult as setting up my EJB containers) which
> is a
> > problem I'd like to help a little to solve.
> 
> What you are complaining about is CPAN (and it's
> tools), this  
> discussion has nothing todo with Catalyst, it would
> be much more  
> productive to move it to the p5p list since it's a
> general problem.
> 
> 
> --
> sebastian
> 
> 
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> http://lists.rawmode.org/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
> 


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