First, thanks for the writeup here on PM and for your help with Apache::PAR!

As of Apache::PAR 0.30, the inability to use templating modules has been addressed in a manner similar to what you describe above with Apache::PARTemp. To use this feature, set an environment variable or mod_perl var to ##UNPACKDIR## in your web.conf file. This will enable content unpacking. For instance (inside a web.conf)

PerlSetEnv FooTemplateDir ##UNPACKDIR##/templates

will set an environment variable of FooTemplateDir to a subdirectory under the location where the content is unpacked into during Apache startup (a subdirectory under platform specify temporary directory unless changed through the Apache config.) There are also options to control the location of unpacking, the ability to reload changed archives, etc. See the Apache::PAR documentation for more information.

0.31, when it is released, should expand on this ability by allowing only parts of an archive to be unpacked, as well as some other features related to reloading archives.

Also, I haven't yet worked on it, but am planning a new module to allow the use of PAR archives from other web servers (as CGI, or maybe FastCGI etc).

If anyone has additional suggestions for new features, or would like to report a problem, please let me know.

Thanks,

techy