Check out the Apache::Reload module. It allows code in your .pm files to be recompiled automatically when a change to the file is detected - essential for development.

Update: When I do need to do a graceful restart on the Apache server (eg: to pick up changes to the config file) I tend not to use apachectl directly. If there is a bug in your code or config, it won't be detected until the server tries (and fails) to restart. This leaves you with two problems: the server is down and you have broken code which must be fixed before the server will start. Pressure!

A safer option is to use a custom script which first does a syntax check of you httpd.conf and any Perl modules it loads. If that succeeds that it's safe to call apachctl. Here's the relevant part of my initserver script:

#!/bin/sh

SERVER="/usr/sbin/httpd"
CONFIG="/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf"

ARGS=`/bin/ls /usr/lib/apache | perl -nle 'm{^(?:mod_|lib)(.*?)(\.so)?
+$} && print uc("-DHAVE_$1")'`

if ! $SERVER -T $ARGS -f $CONFIG
then
  echo "Server not restarted due to errors in config file"
  exit 1
fi

apachectl graceful

[download]

The ARGS=... line adds command line arguments like -DHAVE_PERL, -DHAVE_REWRITE etc for all the modules which are loaded dynamically. You may or may not need that.

In reply to Re: mod_perl caching by grantm
in thread mod_perl caching by e_macks

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