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I inherited one ruby on rails application /big one :(/. I don't know ruby well, so thinking about porting it into Perl/Plack.


  • what perl framework should I use for this task? (what will be the most straightforward?) Need Catalyst or will be enough Dancer and/or Mojo? Or something other?
  • what other things I should consider?
  • what is the best way start? With views? or basic objects?

I know, that this is not a smartest question, but really need some starting, how/to advices, alignment.

Ps: Here are other applications, already in perl - so porting is the best way to have homogenous environment. (the question is not about: porting or not porting. It is about how to porting?)

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So you want to rewrite the app in perl, because you don't know ruby well, but you don't know perl well enough to choose the right framework. well, I don't know what to say. –  Karoly Horvath Jul 16 '11 at 21:25
learn ruby on rails … long term it will be best, you learn a new language and you don't have to invest hundreds of hours porting it into another language –  knittl Jul 16 '11 at 21:25
If you ask me, it's a waste of developer effort (especially if the rails app is well written). –  Karoly Horvath Jul 16 '11 at 21:38
To do this you'll have to learn so much Ruby that by the time you're done you'll know Ruby anyway, and it'll have taken about four times longer because of weird corner cases you'll have to figure out. Learning Ruby (especially from Perl) will be much easier. –  Chris Lutz Jul 16 '11 at 21:50
It's extremely hard to tell you what you should use when we have no idea what you are doing, what you need to do, and so on. Just learn Ruby. It's an easy language to pick up. –  brian d foy Jul 16 '11 at 23:14
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2 Answers

My 2¢.

You need to know how rail apps are structured. Check this link for basics.

I point you in the Jifty direction, but if you know better Mojolicious - use it. Routes are pretty close to rails routes.

When you porting web app, probably you want get a similar interface. So, start with "app/view". Rails views are simple and clear. When you will start porting them, you will got some ideas how they're works.

Be ready - you will rewriting your objects more times - simply because trial/error. ;) Use Moose for simplifying things.

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If you don't know the origin language you'll have a hard time porting it to the one you know. So if I can answer with an other question:

Are you sure you are porting and not just rewriting the application in an other language?

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