=head1 NAME Catalyst::Upgrading - Instructions for upgrading to the latest Catalyst =head1 Upgrading to Catalyst 5.90080 UTF8 encoding is now default. For temporary backwards compatibility, if this change is causing you trouble, you can disable it by setting the application configuration option to undef: MyApp->config(encoding => undef); But please consider this a temporary measure since it is the intention that UTF8 is enabled going forwards and the expectation is that other ecosystem projects will assume this as well. At some point you application will not correctly function without this setting. As of 5.90084 we've added two additional configuration flags for more selective control over some encoding changes: 'skip_body_param_unicode_decoding' and 'skip_complex_post_part_handling'. You may use these to more selectively disable new features while you are seeking a long term fix. Please review CONFIGURATION in L. For further information, please see L A number of projects in the wider ecosystem required minor updates to be able to work correctly. Here's the known list: L, L, L, L, L You will need to update to modern versions in most cases, although quite a few of these only needed minor test case and documentation changes so you will need to review the changelog of each one that is relevant to you to determine your true upgrade needs. =head1 Upgrading to Catalyst 5.90060 Starting in the v5.90059_001 development release, the regexp dispatch type is no longer automatically included as a dependency. If you are still using this dispatch type, you need to add L into your build system. The standalone distribution of Regexp will be supported for the time being, but should we find that supporting it prevents us from moving L forward in necessary ways, we reserve the right to drop that support. It is highly recommended that you use this last stage of deprecation to change your code. =head1 Upgrading to Catalyst 5.90040 =head2 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding is now core The previously stand alone Unicode support module L has been brought into core as a default plugin. Going forward, all you need is to add a configuration setting for the encoding type. For example: package Myapp::Web; use Catalyst; __PACKAGE__->config( encoding => 'UTF-8' ); Please note that this is different from the old stand alone plugin which applied C encoding by default (that is, if you did not set an explicit C configuration value, it assumed you wanted UTF-8). In order to preserve backwards compatibility you will need to explicitly turn it on via the configuration setting. THIS MIGHT CHANGE IN THE FUTURE, so please consider starting to test your application with proper UTF-8 support and remove all those crappy hacks you munged into the code because you didn't know the Plugin existed :) For people that are using the Plugin, you will note a startup warning suggesting that you can remove it from the plugin list. When you do so, please remember to add the configuration setting, since you can no longer rely on the default being UTF-8. We'll add it for you if you continue to use the stand alone plugin and we detect this, but this backwards compatibility shim will likely be removed in a few releases (trying to clean up the codebase after all). If you have trouble with any of this, please bring it to the attention of the Catalyst maintainer group. =head2 basic async and event loop support This version of L offers some support for using L and L event loops in your application. These changes should work fine for most applications however if you are already trying to perform some streaming, minor changes in this area of the code might affect your functionality. Please see L for more and for a basic example. We consider this feature experimental. We will try not to break it, but we reserve the right to make necessary changes to fix major issues that people run into when the use this functionality in the wild. =head1 Upgrading to Catalyst 5.90030 =head2 Regex dispatch type is deprecated. The Regex dispatchtype (L) has been deprecated. You are encouraged to move your application to Chained dispatch (L). If you cannot do so, please add a dependency to Catalyst::DispatchType::Regex to your application's Makefile.PL =head1 Upgrading to Catalyst 5.9 The major change is that L, a toolkit for using the L specification, now replaces most of the subclasses of L. If you are using one of the standard subclasses of L this should be a straightforward upgrade for you. It was a design goal for this release to preserve as much backwards compatibility as possible. However, since L is different from L, it is possible that differences exist for edge cases. Therefore, we recommend that care be taken with this upgrade and that testing should be greater than would be the case with a minor point update. Please inform the Catalyst developers of any problems so that we can fix them and incorporate tests. It is highly recommended that you become familiar with the L ecosystem and documentation. Being able to take advantage of L development and middleware is a major bonus to this upgrade. Documentation about how to take advantage of L by writing your own C<< .psgi >> file is contained in L. If you have created a custom subclass of L, you will need to convert it to be a subclass of L. If you are using the L engine, L, this new release supersedes that code. If you are using a subclass of L that is aimed at nonstandard or internal/testing uses, such as L, you should still be able to continue using that engine. Advice for specific subclasses of L follows: =head2 Upgrading the FastCGI Engine No upgrade is needed if your myapp_fastcgi.pl script is already upgraded to use L. =head2 Upgrading the mod_perl / Apache Engines The engines that are built upon the various iterations of mod_perl, L (for mod_perl 1, and Apache 1.x) and L (for mod_perl 2, and Apache 2.x), should be seamless upgrades and will work using L or L as required. L, however, is no longer supported, as Plack does not support mod_perl version 1.99. This is unlikely to be a problem for anyone, as 1.99 was a brief beta-test release for mod_perl 2, and all users of mod_perl 1.99 are encouraged to upgrade to a supported release of Apache 2 and mod_perl 2. =head2 Upgrading the HTTP Engine The default development server that comes with the L distribution should continue to work as expected with no changes as long as your C script is upgraded to use L. =head2 Upgrading the CGI Engine If you were using L there is no upgrade needed if your myapp_cgi.pl script is already upgraded to use L. =head2 Upgrading Catalyst::Engine::HTTP::Prefork If you were using L then L is automatically loaded. You should (at least) change your C to depend on Starman. You can regenerate your C script with C and implement a C class that looks like this: package MyApp::Script::Server; use Moose; use namespace::autoclean; extends 'CatalystX::Script::Server::Starman'; 1; This takes advantage of the new script system, and will add a number of options to the standard server script as extra options are added by Starman. More information about these options can be seen at L. An alternate route to implement this functionality is to write a simple .psgi file for your application, and then use the L utility to start the server. =head2 Upgrading the PSGI Engine If you were using L, this new release supersedes this engine in supporting L. By default the Engine is now always L. As a result, you can remove the dependency on L in your C. Applications that were using L previously should entirely continue to work in this release with no changes. However, if you have an C script, then you no longer need to specify the PSGI engine. Instead, the L application class now has a new method C which returns a L compatible coderef which you can wrap in the middleware of your choice. Catalyst will use the .psgi for your application if it is located in the C directory of the application. For example, if you were using L in the past, you will have written (or generated) a C