On Mon, 7 Dec 2009, Jonathan Rockway wrote:
* On Fri, Dec 04 2009, Bill Ward wrote:
Yep, that's why I didn't use Catalyst and would never suggest it to
anyone... it's an IT nightmare.
Seriously?
My Catalyst app works as soon as I type
# apt-get install libcatalyst-perl
on my Debian Stable system. It isn't quite Java + WAR, but it is
also no "IT nightmare".
Please get the facts straight before spreading FUD. Your argument would
be more persuasive if it was true.
I have no beef with you Jonathan, but I think you're missing the mark, it is
a legitimate criticims. I maintain my own distribution that I use for work
and personal use. The reality is that I have to do that packaging work for
my distribution. Now, bear in mind that I do use Catalyst, but it's a fact
that overly complex applications with a long list of dependencies do place a
huge burden on IT infrastructure.
It wouldn't be bad if Catalyst was the only major Perl code I had to
support, but, gee, I happen to like and use Perl almost freaking everywhere.
And when you have that many packages it's a question of *when*, not *if*, an
update to a common dependency will break one or more applications. APIs
change, certain functionality gets deprecated, or code bases are split into
separate module namespaces, etc. I'm not saying that this is a frequent
occurrence, but it does, has, and will happen again.
Catalyst has by far the longest list of dependencies of any Perl code I
support, bar none. It's a very flexible and extendable framework, but it
would be naive to think that that doesn't come at a price. And I pay that
price regularly.
Now, before I hear "just use Debian", let me dispell that ignorance. One of
the primary reasons why I maintain my own distro/packages is to make sure
that revs & APIs don't change underneath me just because some distro
developer gets a wild hair and wants to live on the bleeding edge. That,
and to avoid them from doing stupid things like, say, lobotimzing the RNG in
openssl.
I have better things to do with my time than wonder if apt-get is going to
pull in a new magical combination of revisions that's going to break some
code I need to just work.
--Arthur Corliss
Live Free or Die
