Perl Catalyst on a base Debian system
This turns out to be amazingly easy, at least with Debian 7.3.
First, instead of MySQL, I followed instructions at the MariaDB site: Setting Up MariaDB Repositories. Then:
$ sudo apt-get install libcatalyst-modules-perl
which installed over 200 modules, but what do you know:
$ catalyst.pl Foo
creates a Foo Catalyst application under the current directory. Everything *Just Works. *Thanks to Debian and the folks who bring you Catalyst.
Further reading:
An Introduction to Application Development with Catalyst and Perl May 14, 2012 by Henry Van Styn in Linux Journal
Some functional Catalyst examples on the Catalyst Framework site
Using Catalyst::Plugin::AutoCRUD: Tutorial with Examples for Newbies on Perl.org
UPDATE (April 2014): Catalyst seems a bit heavy for most of my needs. I'm exploring mojolicious.