[Catalyst] OT: mod_fastcgi vs. mod_perl (was uri_for() question)

[Perrin Harkins]

On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 13:42 -0800, Scott Karns wrote:
> If you don't mind, I (and other relative neophytes,
> I'm sure) would like to hear you and anyone else
> interested in chiming in, expand on your preference
> for mod_fastcgi over mod_perl when running on apache.

You can find quite a bit of discussion on this, both on the mod_perl
list and on sites like Perlmonks.org.  Here's a sample:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=apache-modperl&m=113725940930838&w=2

Until recently, a major reason to avoid FastCGI was the lack of
community.  It felt pretty abandoned, and you could hear the wind
blowing through the mailing list, although there were always a few
helpful people on there.  Ruby on Rails seems to be changing that, but
there are still many more CPAN modules for doing things with mod_perl,
more books, more magazine articles, etc.

On the other hand, the major reason to use FastCGI was support on shared
web hosts.  I don't think mod_perl will ever be popular there.  You
really need your own (real or virtual) machine to run mod_perl
effectively.

The benchmarks I've seen show no significant performance differences.  I
wouldn't choose based on that.  Or do your own benchmark if you're dying
to know.  It will probably reveal more about which one you know how to
tune than anything else, but that's still important.

If you don't have a use for mod_perl's integration with the web server
or the mod_perl CPAN modules, and you aren't constrained by needing to
use a shared web host that only supports FastCGI, you probably should
choose based on what your development group has experience with and
knows how to support.  There's not a clear reason to switch if you don't
need the special features of either.

- Perrin