CATALYST(1)

NAME
catalyst - Bootstrap a Catalyst application

SYNOPSIS
catalyst.pl [options] application-name

'catalyst.pl' creates a skeleton for a new application, and allows you to upgrade the skeleton of your old application.

 Options:
   -force      don't create a .new file where a file to be created exists
   -help       display this help and exit
   -makefile   only update Makefile.PL
   -scripts    only update helper scripts

 application-name must be a valid Perl module name and can include "::",
 which will be converted to '-' in the project name.

 Examples:
    catalyst.pl My::App
    catalyst.pl MyApp

 To upgrade your app to a new version of Catalyst:
    catalyst.pl -force -scripts MyApp

DESCRIPTION
The "catalyst.pl" script bootstraps a Catalyst application, creating a directory structure populated with skeleton files.

The application name must be a valid Perl module name. The name of the directory created is formed from the application name supplied, with double colons replaced with hyphens (so, for example, the directory for "My::App" is "My-App").

Using the example application name "My::App", the application directory will contain the following items:

README
    a skeleton README file, which you are encouraged to expand on

Changes
    a changes file with an initial entry for the creation of the application

Makefile.PL
    Makefile.PL uses the "Module::Install" system for packaging and distribution of the application.

lib contains the application module ("My/App.pm") and subdirectories for model, view, and controller components ("My/App/M", "My/App/V", and "My/App/C").

root
    root directory for your web document content. This is left empty.

script
    a directory containing helper scripts:

    "myapp_create.pl"
        helper script to generate new component modules

    "myapp_server.pl"
        runs the generated application within a Catalyst test server, which can be used for testing without resorting to a full-blown web server configuration.

    "myapp_cgi.pl"
        runs the generated application as a CGI script

    "myapp_fastcgi.pl"
        runs the generated application as a FastCGI script

    "myapp_test.pl"
        runs an action of the generated application from the comand line.

t   test directory

The application module generated by the "catalyst.pl" script is functional, although it reacts to all requests by outputting a friendly welcome screen.

NOTE
Neither "catalyst.pl" nor the generated helper script will overwrite existing files. In fact the scripts will generate new versions of any existing files, adding the extension ".new" to the filename. The ".new" file is not created if would be identical to the existing file.

This means you can re-run the scripts for example to see if newer versions of Catalyst or its plugins generate different code, or to see how you may have changed the generated code (although you do of course have all your code in a version control system anyway, don't you ...).

SEE ALSO
Catalyst::Manual, Catalyst::Manual::Intro

AUTHORS
Catalyst Contributors, see Catalyst.pm

COPYRIGHT
This library is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.