[Catalyst] Google Summer of Code: mentors, projects

[Kieren Diment]

On 04/03/2009, at 3:41 AM, Lee Aylward wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 06:06:10PM +1100, Kieren Diment wrote:
>> I'm still keen on the idea of an easy Perl/Catalyst installer.
>> Something that might encompass local::lib, PAR and deployable on the
>> three or four main OSs  windows (strawberry perl), OS X (10.4 and  
>> 10.5,
>> using the system provided perl) and linux (maybe debian and red hat  
>> based
>> distros - again using the system perl).  Also needs to work in an
>> environment with no root/Administrator  access.   And a nice "double
>> click" installer at the end would be good.  I've rigged up an  
>> appalling
>> hack to do this in windows that needs finessed, but I haven't  
>> looked at
>> the other OSs.
>>
>> Mentoring?  Well, what I can offer is to point a student in the right
>> direction of who to talk to, not much else.  I'm also very tolerant  
>> of
>> stupidity being a somewhat mentally challenged programmer myself.
>>
>
> I think keeping each installer platform specific would be best. People
> on OS X expect a .dmg with a .pkg inside for things like frameworks.
> Windows users expect a .exe/msi installer. And if these installers  
> install
> Catalyst to the system perl (or strawberry perl in Windows' case),
> even better, because then they can use CPAN to upgrade Catalyst later
> on.
>
> What would be really cool is if the Windows installer checked for the
> existence of Strawberry Perl, and offered to install it if it can  
> not be
> found.
>
> I don't see a need for anything like this on Linux, though. Don't most
> dists have their own Catalyst packages? I know Debian's have served me
> fairly well for the past few years.
>

Well, yes, Linux is the odd man in the pack.  But once you sort the  
toolchain stuff for the other environments, then linux should *ahem*  
almost write its own toolchain.  Also useful for single user apps, and  
when you don't want to use the outdated packages.

> I don't have any experience with the Windows platform, but I would
> consider helping out with an OS X package.