make install or not

arlaneenalra has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have recently been experimenting with various perl web application frameworks and have run into a question:

make install or not

To date, the infrastructure that I have been working with relies on an perl web app to checked out from svn into a runtime directory. Which has worked reasonably well using CGI::Application and some custom in house libraries. Now, I'm looking at Catalyst, which gives you a nice Makefile.PL that will check/install dependencies for you. Just running make creates a slew of files that I'm not sure make sense for our present deployment model.

So, what is the best practice here?

Comment on make install or not

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Re: make install or not by Tanktalus (Canon) on Jul 25, 2011 at 20:24 UTC
Generally, I go for the "official install method", even if it means installing to a private directory and adding that to my @INC via `use lib ...`. Yes, that means extra stuff is there. But which extra stuff may not always be obvious. I simply automate the installation of everything with its prereqs, which makes switching providers, perl versions, developer machines, etc., much easier. And it makes it easier to get help from both the author and other monks if you have everything installed, otherwise it becomes painful to debug. Many people will get annoyed if they see that you've gone and not installed parts of the distro that are required when you thought they weren't. The best practice is always to follow the documentation when installing software. Whether that's a perl module or a RDBMS or a word processor. Anything else is left for advanced users and masochists. Oddly, those two groups have a lot of overlap.	[reply] [d/l]

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Re: make install or not
by Tanktalus (Canon) on Jul 25, 2011 at 20:24 UTC

Generally, I go for the "official install method", even if it means installing to a private directory and adding that to my @INC via use lib .... Yes, that means extra stuff is there. But which extra stuff may not always be obvious.

I simply automate the installation of everything with its prereqs, which makes switching providers, perl versions, developer machines, etc., much easier. And it makes it easier to get help from both the author and other monks if you have everything installed, otherwise it becomes painful to debug. Many people will get annoyed if they see that you've gone and not installed parts of the distro that are required when you thought they weren't.

The best practice is always to follow the documentation when installing software. Whether that's a perl module or a RDBMS or a word processor. Anything else is left for advanced users and masochists. Oddly, those two groups have a lot of overlap.

[reply]
[d/l]