[Catalyst] Suggestions for CatalystX::Installer

[Andreas Marienborg]

On May 14, 2008, at 7:16 AM, Paul Cain wrote:

> I've been examining everything, and was ponder about a few things:
>
> PAR looks like a great way to archive a Catalyst app, but it doesn't
> look like it is possible to un-archive it to where it is back to its
> original state in case some changes need to be made. Of course, that
> could be accomplished with a tar.gz file(created by make dist). I'm
> not sure if that is really a problem or not.
>
> It appears that all that CatalystX::Installer should need to deploy a
> database is a valid schema.
>
> After getting a list of required modules(using Module::ScanDeps), do I
> just add them to makefile.PL?
>

I would say that making sure the deps are correct would not be the job  
of CatalystX::Installer, but the developer of the app.

What I hope CatalystX::Installer will be, is something that I can use  
in my apps to make them easier to set up for people installing the app.

This for me includes:

- dependency handling
any deps the app needs, that isn't available, or the wrong version  
should be installed / helped installed. For instance, a debian user  
might want suggestions for debian packages to install (quite large  
scope :p) For me it should not infer deps automaticly at this time,  
that the developer should do before releasing his app.

- app configuration
Databases, paths, etc. This needs to be very customizable/pluggable.  
For instance in easycms2, I have a config setting for what resizes to  
make of pictures. It would be classy if I could easily map this to  
some webform using CatalystX::Installer :p

- schema deployment / upgrades
Deploy or upgrade the given database-configuration. This sort of  
infers that the CatalystX::Installer also can be used for upgrades :p

- example configurations
For apache, lighty, nginx, perlbal(?), http-server, fastcgi etc.
Perhaps it could even go as far as trying to put config under the  
propper /etc/apache/conf-enabled or whatever (this becomes distro- 
specific, and probably needs to be pluggable)

- Running tests.
This I think is a cool idea, to optionally run tests against the  
finished setup. The author should perhaps specify which tests to run


- andreas