I think the best way to handle this would be to try making a few test apps in the frameworks you are considering. Then you'd really know what you were getting yourself into.

I recently did some work with Catalyst, and it really was a whole-new-level of good, over working the old way. It's modularity and flexibility is awesome.

I would be surprised if you had to build a %100 port, all at once. IE you could probably port some stuff and leave other stuff alone and do it a bit at a time. That may sound crazy, but Catalyst is really that modular and flexible.

Regarding Text::Template, it should be pretty easy to implement a plugin if there isn't one already. The way things tend to work in Catalyst is, you take a module that does the heavy lifting, like Test::Template, and you write some glue code as an adapter and hey-presto, you've got a Test::Template Catalyst plugin.

Hope that helps.

--Pileofrogs