Our web-based Room Booking and Resource Scheduling system, MIDAS is written in the Perl programming language. Perl is available for all major web servers. In fact, it is pre-installed as standard on most Linux-based web servers.
If Perl isn't available on your server, it must first be installed & configured before you'll be able to install a self-hosted MIDAS booking system. For Windows based servers, we recommend Strawberry Perl.
MIDAS also requires a number of additional Perl "modules". Many of these modules are included within the default installation of Perl.
Once you've installed Perl, our Server Readiness Tool will help you identify any missing Perl modules required by MIDAS that you'll need to install.
This article outlines how to install any missing Perl modules identified through our Server Readiness Tool, or when attempting to install a self-hosted edition of MIDAS on your server.
Locate/search for "Install a Perl Module" in the left-hand menu.
On the "Install a Perl Module" screen, enter the name of the module you wish to install and click "Install Now":
How to install Perl modules via the command line (Linux-based systems)
Before installing Perl modules for the first time, you'll need to ensure that the CPAN Perl Module installer has been installed, to do this from the command line (bash):
# yum install perl-CPAN make gcc # cpan
You'll then be prompted to configure CPAN for the first time.
Once complete, at the cpan prompt, type o conf commit to save settings, followed by quit to exit the cpan prompt.
You'll only need to do the above once. Once CPAN has been installed, installing a Perl module is as simple as entering the following from the command line:
# /usr/bin/perl -MCPAN -e 'install <module_name>'
...where "<module_name>" is the name of the module you wish to install (i.e. "DBD::mysql") and "/usr/bin/perl" is the path to the installation of Perl on your server in which you wish to install the module (which should be the same as the "Path To Perl" setting you subsequently specify when installing MIDAS on your server).
When installing Perl modules via the command line in this way, if you omit the path to path, and simply type "perl -MCPAN....", this will instead install Perl modules to the default/root installation of Perl on your server. This may not be the same Perl installation that is used when you install your MIDAS scheduling system. This is because some servers may have multiple installations of Perl running at different locations for different users/purposes. For this reason, it's recommended that you always specify the path to the perl installation your MIDAS system will use, rather than just using "perl" (with no path) when installing Perl modules via the Linux command line.
How to install Perl modules via ActivePerl
ActivePerl (up until Active Perl 5.26) came with a Perl Package Manager (PPM) utility which allowed you to easily install additional Perl modules.
PPM was sadly discontinued, and from ActivePerl 5.28 onwards, ActiveState have instead introduced a "state" tool for installing additional Perl modules to ActivePerl. For assistance installing Perl modules using ActiveState's new "state" tool, please refer to the vendor's own documentation.
Note: You'll need to ensure that "Make" is installed as part of your Cygwin setup in order to be able to install Perl modules. To install "Make", run your Cygwin setup again and you'll find "Make" listed under "Devel" category
