[Catalyst] PAR deployment w/ non-standard layout

[Matt S Trout]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 04:52:08AM -0500, Matthew Pitts wrote:
> Due to our initial development effort being broken down b/t code and
> design, our application has somewhat of a non-standard layout. I'm now
> looking to use PAR to deploy the app, but I'm having some issues due to
> our non-standard setup and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the
> magic behind 'make catalyst_par'.
> 
> Does the built PAR contain all of the app's "root" content? I've built
> some test PARs and I can't find where it has this content included.
> However, when I run a test server via a PAR and browse the
> the /tmp/par-... directory that contains the app I find the
> inc/lib/MyApp/root directory that contains all such "rootness".

I'd dig in Module::Install::Catalyst for how it's implemented; I can't
calim to really understand the PAR bits.

Doing 

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/tmp/myapp-install-test; make install

will give you an idea of how it gets laid out in normal installation.
 
> Are there still issues with PAR's /tmp/par-... magic in a FCGI setup
> with multiple "versions" of the same app?
> Reference: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/catalyst/users/11148
> I want to be able to run my UAT and PROD apps on the same system, but
> obviously they would need different home directories.

The reference you show says this is a bug in parl/PAR; I think you'd be
better looking at its changelog than asking here.

> Can I use myapp.par as a FCGI internal process in mod_fcgid? Would I
> just replace my Apache directive references to 'script/myapp_fastcgi.pl'
> with 'parl myapp.par script/myapp_fastcgi.pl'?

Don't use mod_fcgid for production.

High-uptime apps should always use FastCgiExternalServer style configuration
- http://use.perl.org/~zzo/journal/34146 is based on how I do it.

mod_fcgid, sadly, doesn't support this, so you should still use mod_fastcgi
if you're using apache (which I am).
 
> Are there any issues with using the following for mod_fcgid to support
> my non-standard layout:
> 'CATALYST_HOME=/path/to/home parl myapp.par script/myapp_fastcgi.pl'?

I'd use MYAPP_HOME instead of CATALYST_HOME, but I don't see a problem
with it.

-- 
      Matt S Trout       Need help with your Catalyst or DBIx::Class project?
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