[Catalyst] How to use local::lib

[Tomas Doran]

On 23 Jun 2009, at 08:59, Tobias Kremer wrote:
> These things make the local::lib approach a bit more unappealing for
> us. For one thing, it appears to be still quite a bit rough around the
> edges and I doubt that there's anything I personally could do about it
> because my knowledge there is limited. Secondly, we really would like
> to have a central repository for our development AND production
> systems. What proven alternatives are there if you have developers
> working on OS X, Ubuntu etc. and deploy on a different (Debian)
> system?

Erm, well, the new --self-contained feature is a little rough round  
the edges, sure.

local::lib itself just works given what it was originally trying to  
accomplish.

I think you need a better separation between development and staging.  
If you're not running something production like in staging, then IMO  
you're really screwed.

Developers can then use what they like (and whatever OS/versions of  
modules) they want, if they want to install the app locally, but  
that's unsupported. I'd also make a 'production like' (i.e. same OS)  
vmware machine available with the 'standard' dependencies - all of  
your developers should be given enough horsepower to run vmware,  
problem solved.

> What about CPAN::Mini? At first, it sounds strange to have a whole
> copy of the CPAN around (although it's not that big), but then again
> it sounds really cool to just "make installdeps" and have everything
> installed in the correct version in a cross-platform compatible way.

Yes, you can just point an ftp server at a CPAN::Mini, then set your  
CPAN shell to use that as your CPAN mirror - it'll just work..

> By the way: Would it theoretically be possible to install specific
> versions of a CPAN distribution? Is there possibly already work
> underway to achieve this? I think that this would really solve a lot
> of deployment trouble ...

Erm, it's already practically possible. You just need to ask the CPAN  
shell for a specific revision.

>
> So, how are you doing your deployment? :) I believe this is an area
> where there's still a lot of homebrew stuff going on and it would be
> nice to have one (or 2-3) ways to do it! I'd be willing to write
> something up for the wiki if there's enough input.

At work I debian package everything. But you're still going to make  
one package per dependency per platform.

That's a lot of work.. And it totally precludes having different  
applications with different versions of the same module on the same  
machine.

I guess this comes down to how many environments you're prepared to  
'officially' support, and what your constraints are.

Cheers
t0m