Copyright (c) 1998-2000 by Jonathan Swartz. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. Welcome to Mason, a Perl-based web site development and delivery system. Mason allows web pages and sites to be constructed from shared, reusable building blocks called components. Components contain a mix of Perl and HTML, and can call each other and pass values back and forth like subroutines. Components increase modularity and eliminate repetitive work: common design elements (headers, footers, menus, logos) can be extracted into their own components where they need be changed only once to affect the whole site. Other Mason features include powerful filtering and templating facilities, an HTML/data caching model, and a web-based site previewing utility. See http://www.masonhq.com/ for more information. PREREQUISITES Mason requires Perl 5.004 or greater plus the following CPAN modules: MLDBM Data::Dumper (comes installed with Perl 5.005 and on) Params::Validate The following CPAN modules are optional for certain features, but not required: Time::HiRes INSTALLATION To install Mason, run the standard sequence: perl Makefile.PL make make install By default, Mason will prompt you for information about where Apache is installed so that it can do tests with a live Apache server. If you would like to skip this, invoke the Makefile.PL like this: perl Makefile.PL --no-prompts After Mason is installed, you will need to activate it by adding some directives to your Apache configuration files. The included pod docs have been pre-converted to HTML for you and placed in the htdocs/ directory. The Mason overview (a good place to start) is in Mason.html. WARNINGS! * Don't use Mason with an older mod_perl DSO (dynamic shared object). Using Mason with a mod_perl DSO may cause your Apache server to crash silently at startup, or fail intermittently. The fix for this problem is to install Apache/mod_perl with mod_perl compiled statically into the Apache binary. Packages of Apache with a static mod_perl are available around the net. Testing with recent mod_perls showed improvements, but because this bug can be so intermittent and difficult to spot, mod_perl DSO with Mason is still strictly unsupported. GETTING HELP The official Mason web site is at http://www.masonhq.com/. There you'll find Mason documentation, news, etc. The FAQ, currently maintained by Kwindla Kramer, can be found at http://www.masonhq.com/faq/ or http://allafrica.com/tools/mason/faq.html. Several mailing lists exist for Mason users and developers. Full information can be found at http://www.masonhq.com/maillist.html. CODE EXAMPLES The samples/ directory contains a few basic components as well as a miniature commerce site built with components. The Mason component archive (http://www.masonhq.com/arch/), launched in November 1999, should be another good source of examples. Links to various articles containing code examples are listed at http://www.masonhq.com/articles.html. REPORTING BUGS Send bug reports to the user's mailing list for quickest response. But first check the mailing list archives and the official bugs list on the Mason site to see if the problem has already been reported. For all bug reports indicate your architecture, Apache/Perl/module versions, etc. For installation problems send your handler.pl and httpd.conf. For component problems try to isolate the bug in a single small component or set of components, and send those. If you are experiencing test failures, please run the tests like this: make test TEST_VERBOSE=1 and send the output along with the bug report. Otherwise we'll just ask you to do this before we can do anything. CONTENT MANAGEMENT There is a companion content management system for Mason, originally developed by Mark Schmick and now maintained by Michael Alan Dorman and Jaron Rubenstein. CM is a web-based interface to your component and content files; it allows designers and programmers to work on a site remotely without resorting to ftp or telnet. It supports staging/production sites, RCS versioning of files, global content searching, and a host of other features. CM is written entirely as a set of Mason components. Find out more and download a copy at http://mason-cm.sourceforge.net/. LICENSE Mason was originally developed for the Internet technology group at CMP Media, a publisher of technology magazines. CMP graciously supported our efforts to release Mason as open source software to the Perl community. However, CMP has NO direct involvement with the open source release and bears NO responsibility for its support or maintenance. Mason is provided "as is" and without any express or implied warranties, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantibility and fitness for a particular purpose. Mason is released under the same terms as Perl itself. For more information see the "README" or "Artistic" files provided with the Perl distribution. AUTHOR Jonathan Swartz swartz@pobox.com