Installing Catalyst
As of May 2008, there is a Catalyst release approximately every three months, so it is important to stay up to date. The next major release will be Catalyst 5.8, but the 5.7 series gets bugfix and performance releases reasonably frequently. The current version can be found by navigating to http://search.cpan.org/dist/Catalyst-Runtime.
Following the instructions below will install the basic set of Catalyst modules, on top of which you can use CPAN to install the other modules you need for authentication, authorization, models and so on, typically by adding them as dependencies to your project's Makefile.PL and running make installdeps.
Installation from packages
Debian, Ubuntu
Some operating systems such as Debian or Ubuntu may already have precompiled Catalyst packages. See http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=names&keywords=catalyst or:
apt-cache search catalyst
Fedora
Fedora has a number of Catalyst packages. For more details, see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Catalyst.
Windows
On Windows, you can find Catalyst packages in the http://ppm.tcool.org repository. If the 5.10 repository is not ready at the time you read this, use http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/
Installation from CPAN
If precompiled packages aren't available, or if they are of an older version than the version of Catalyst you want to install, you can go the source installation route.
Before installation
Make sure your OS has a C compiler in the path (cc and gcc). On Debian/Ubuntu, run
apt-get install build-essential
Before installing Catalyst, make sure you have configured cpan (just run cpan). You may also want to update your cpan:
cpan
install CPAN
reload cpan
Installation
Just run cpan Catalyst::Devel and answer yes to all prompts (there will be a lot of them). To force an automatic "yes" to prompts, run
PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 cpan Catalyst::Devel
On OS X
One of the dependencies on OS X is Mac::Carbon. That's pre-installed in the system provided perl, but will be pulled in by cpan if you use your own perl. Some of it's tests are broken on Leopard, so you may need to force install it before following the above directions.
Installation from source
If you want the latest bleeding edge version of Catalyst, you can check it out from SVN: http://dev.catalystframework.org/repos/Catalyst/Catalyst-Runtime/5.70/trunk/.
Alternative installation
For a quick but somewhat deprecated installation, download and execute mst's Shadowcat installer:
perl cat-install
This is a Perl script that interacts with CPAN to install Catalyst and its dependencies, with very little input from you. It requires perl 5.8.1+, a make utility and a compiler, a configured CPAN.pm and Module::Build installed.
Installation on Windows
First, to install Perl on Windows, either:
- get Strawberry Perl, or
- get ActivePerl and then if you want to test the Catalyst installation (
make test), install nmake 9 from VC-Express++. The older version of nmake (1.5) can't handle long command lines, and one particular test expands to a lot of .t files passed to nmake.
Then, install Catalyst::Runtime from the Command Prompt:
ppm install http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/Catalyst-Runtime.ppd
Next, Install the following dependencies:
ppm install http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/Catalyst-Plugin-ConfigLoader.ppd
ppm install http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/Catalyst-Action-RenderView.ppd
ppm install http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/Catalyst-Plugin-Static-Simple.ppd
Finally, install Catalyst::Devel:
ppm install http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/Catalyst-Devel.ppd
If you encounter other dependencies, install them in a similar fashion from http://ppm.tcool.org/archives510/.
Installation on Solaris 10
On Solaris 10, you may have to invoke the script with perlgcc:
perlgcc cat-install
Installation without root
With an account that you are unable to get full access to you can use Local::Lib
Full instructions are on the Advent Calendar at http://www.catalystframework.org/calendar/2007/8.
Obsolete stuff
Note: Task::Catalyst is now obsolete.
Note: you may also notice an older package on the CPAN called Bundle::Catalyst .. this is for very old versions of Catalyst, and you do not want to install it.
Manual installation on Windows
The following are some relatively old installation instructions for Windows: http://catalyst.infogami.com/install/windows.
Upgrading Catalyst
To check your version of Catalyst:
perl -MCatalyst -e "print Catalyst->VERSION"
To see what the current version is, go to http://search.cpan.org/dist/Catalyst-Runtime.
To upgrade:
cpan Catalyst::Devel
cpan Catalyst::Runtime
Troubleshooting
If you run into problems with installation, please verify that your environment is configured correctly. Strange things can happen if CPAN doesn't know where to find gcc, for example.
Help
The Catalyst mailing list or IRC channel (#catalyst on irc.perl.org) are resources to turn to if you are having difficulty getting everything installed.
