Odd behavior when trying to preload Plack apps under mod_perl

[cLive ;-)]

For "reasons", I'm loading a few Plack apps under mod_perl via Plack::Handler::Apache2. During a recent tidy up, I've been moving from one vhost entry per app, to a single vhost entry that uses Plack::App::URLMap, and adding an explicit load of all app modules pre-fork.

Loader app look like this

# find all modules in the apps' directories, and load them via Module:
+:Load (so they are in mod_perl parent)

# create URL mappings of the apps
# %app_modules has app names as keys, and app namespaces as lavues
APP: foreach my $app_name (keys %$app_modules) {
    my $uri_path = "/$app_name";
    my $app_namespace = $app_modules->{$app_name};

    $urlmap->mount( $uri_path => ${app_namespace}->to_app );
}
$urlmap->to_app;

For two example Dancer apps like this, it works as expected:

package App1;
use Dancer2;

our $VERSION = '0.1';

get '/' => sub {
    return "THIS IS ROOT IN APP 1";
};

true;

But when I switch to the proper apps, I hit a problem. In the app, I have the code: use My::App qw(exported_method);

That app does not appear to load. I see no error thrown.

however, if I change the line to My::App->import('exported_method'); it works as expected.

I've been scratching my head over this for a few days now, and wondered if anyone has hit anything like this before, or has any pointers on where I should be digging to work this one out.

It looks like things start behaving if I remove the Module::Load code and don't preload everything (but loading the app this way doesn't preload all the app's dependancies).

[Anonymous Monk]

Minimal code to reproduce error, this is the place to start

[Anonymous Monk]

https://metacpan.org/pod/Plack::Handler::Apache2 warns of https://metacpan.org/pod/Class::Load issues

https://metacpan.org/pod/Dancer%3a%3aDeployment#Running-from-Apache-under-appdir (i know not dancer2 ) warns of Plack::Handler::Apache2 issues

NOTE: Only a single Dancer application can be deployed using the Plack::Handler::Apache2 method. Multiple Dancer applications will not work properly (The routes will be mixed-up between the applications). It's recommended to start each app with plackup using your favorite server (Starman, for example) and then put a web server (Apache, Nginx, Perlbal, etc.) as a frontend server for both apps using reverse proxy (HTTP based, no fastcgi).

both warnings should have linked to a test case, as both bugs are dumb

[cLive ;-)]

Thanks for that insight. I missed it!

Unfortunately I can't spin the apps up separately because they need to run alongside mod_perl to expose code from the existing app, but this helps.