There hasn't been much visible activity here recently. But it doesn't mean nothing is moving: I'm currently trying to switch from ePerl to a Catalyst application.

Using DBIx::Class to handle database queries is very slow in CGI mode, as everything must be reloaded each time a page is displayed (and DBIx::Class is huge at that). Basically, each page require at least 1 second to build, half of it is loading the perl libraries. The server load is very low, so it's not a problem here; but it is one for you who need to wait each time you want to see a page! After considering switching to mod_perl, I decided to prefer FastCGI that will be more memory friendly (there is only 256 MB here, so I'd better not load the application in every apache process serving static content!) I could probably have done it with ePerl, but I already built a Catalyst app in the past, and that was fun and efficient.

The application is nearly ready. I still need to fix a known bug with mod_deflate that keeps Firefox throbbing after the page is loaded (it took me days to figure out what was happening!) The admin part is not done yet, but it can wait a bit. Normally you won't see any difference in the beginning… except that pages will load faster! Stay tuned…