[Catalyst] Quick question on forward porting versus retaining existing code

[Andrew Rodland]

On Thursday, March 17, 2011 02:51:59 PM Joe Landman wrote:
> Hi folks
> 
>    We have a Catalyst app we've developed since about 2005 or so.  We
> put it aside in late 2008, and haven't touched it until now.
> 
>    I wanted to see if it would still work (as it turns out, we can reuse
> this for a new project).
> 
>    Before we get into this in depth, are there any pointers/blog
> posts/articles about forward porting an application (this was
> pre-Moose), or whether or not the app would work without forward porting?
> 
>    Basically we don't want to have to redevelop everything we put into
> that (login/authentication, views, etc.), and simply add to the existing
> app with a limited set of changes to make it current would be ideal.
> 
>    Thanks!
> 
> Joe

It's the intention of the Catalyst dev team that new releases don't break 
existing apps. The 5.7 to 5.8 transition broke that promise *slightly* more 
than most releases (mostly due to the C3 MRO), but a great many apps written 
for 5.7 will still run without any changes on 5.8, and of the remainder, 99% 
will only need very small changes. Rewriting your code to make explicit use of 
Moose is *not* required. Just deploy the app with the current version of 
Catalyst and current versions of any plugins it uses, and if there are any 
errors or warnings on startup, use them as guidance. If you run into a nut you 
can't crack, please feel free to come back for advice, but you should start 
out by just trying to run the app.

Andrew