looking for good mod_perl documentation -- desperate, out of options

I'm looking for any online documentation of mod_perl that is complete
and generally believed to be error-free. Every source of
documentation I've found has been plagued with so many omissions or
outright mistakes that it has been useless, or worse, almost resulted
in the machine being put into a state that would have left it
irretrievably broken.

For example even the "official" documentation at
http://perl.apache.org/docs/2.0/user/install/install.html
is 16 pages long, and still:
- does not tell you how to tell if you have mod_perl already
installed, so that you can skip all of that
- says mod_perl 1.x goes with apache 1.x and mod_perl 2.x goes with
apache 2.x, but fails to say that mod_perl 1.99 "counts as" a 2.x
version (caused me hours of out-of-my-mind frustration and lost time
last time I attempted this)
- neglects to say that on some systems you can save yourself 16 pages
of grief by just typing "yum install mod_perl"
- says you need a certain version of Apache but does not tell you how
to find which version of Apache you have. (Yes, I know how to do
this, but it's the kind of thing that documentation should include.)

plus many, many other sentences that are useless without some
explanatory note saying "And this is how you do xyz". Most other
sources of advice on mod_perl are even worse, consisting fo a
hodgepodge of comments posted in a forum that are out of date or do
not work for some other reason.

I'm looking for documentation on mod_perl that has the best track
record -- that means the highest percentage of reasonably smart but
not UNIX-headed people who read it and got it to work, and the lowest
percentage of people who read it and got into arguments that ended
with "Well of COURSE you have to do THAT first -- EVERYBODY knows
that!"

Ideally, something that was written by a commercial author, whose
ability to feed themselves and their family was dependent on their
ability to produce documentation that actually worked, and, if they
had published something consisting of the contents of the URL above,
would have been thrown out in the snow and beaten to death with their
own frozen limbs.

Has any documentation ever been written for mod_perl that comes out
positively even when judged on those standards?

Re: looking for good mod_perl documentation -- desperate, out of options

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:02:33 -0800, bennett wrote:
> Ideally, something that was written by a commercial author, whose
> ability to feed themselves and their family was dependent on their
> ability to produce documentation that actually worked, and, if they
> had published something consisting of the contents of the URL above,
> would have been thrown out in the snow and beaten to death with their
> own frozen limbs.
>
> Has any documentation ever been written for mod_perl that comes out
> positively even when judged on those standards?

Have you tried http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pmodperl/ ?

--
Peter Scott
http://www.perlmedic.com/
http://www.perldebugged.com/

Re: looking for good mod_perl documentation -- desperate, out of options

On Feb 24, 3:38 am, Peter Scott wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:02:33 -0800, bennett wrote:
> > Ideally, something that was written by a commercial author, whose
> > ability to feed themselves and their family was dependent on their
> > ability to produce documentation that actually worked, and, if they
> > had published something consisting of the contents of the URL above,
> > would have been thrown out in the snow and beaten to death with their
> > own frozen limbs.
>
> > Has any documentation ever been written for mod_perl that comes out
> > positively even when judged on those standards?
>
> Have you triedhttp://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pmodperl/?
>
> --
> Peter Scotthttp://www.perlmedic.com/http://www.perldebugged.com/

Actually I solved the problem after a few more hours last night. None
of the sources that I read had complete and accurate information, but
I was able to pull bits and pieces from each of them and assemble them
into something that worked

Unfortunately, at the link above, the free preview sections didn't
include the info on installing mod_perl 2.0, so I don't know if the
information in the book is useful.

OK, I've calmed down a bit since last night, but seriously -- in all
of the 16 pages at
http://perl.apache.org/docs/2.0/user/install/install.html
why don't they ever say "On some systems, you can type 'yum install
mod_perl' and it will install it for you", so you can skip everything
else?

Re: looking for good mod_perl documentation -- desperate, out ofoptions

On 02/24/2007 09:28 PM, bennett@peacefire.org wrote:
> [...]
> OK, I've calmed down a bit since last night, but seriously -- in all
> of the 16 pages at
> http://perl.apache.org/docs/2.0/user/install/install.html
> why don't they ever say "On some systems, you can type 'yum install
> mod_perl' and it will install it for you", so you can skip everything
> else?
>

Notify the author(s) of the omission. Basically, I think that they only
need to add a sentence like this, "Some operating systems, including all
of the popular flavors of Linux, have commands for the semi-automatic
installation of mod_perl; check your operating system's documentation
for the details."

I worded that statement generally, because each O/S has a different
system for installing software. I assume that "yum" relates to Suse. On
Debian, it's "apt-get install libapache2-mod-perl2". On Slackware, it's
probably "installpkg ...." On Redhat, Fedora and Mandrake, "rpm" is the
installation utility.

--
Windows Vista and your freedom in conflict:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061019/102225.shtml