The testbed runs on Linux, on something resembling SLC5/6 or CentOS 6. It can probably run on later versions or other flavours of Linux too without difficulty, I haven't tested it.
You will need POE, the Perl Object Environment, and a few other modules. You can install them either via yum:
yum install -y perl-JSON-XS perl-Clone perl-YAML perl-POE
or by using the CPAN module:
yum install -y perl-CPAN # unless you already have it on your system? perl -mCPAN -e shell # follow the configuration prompts if this is the first time you launch CPAN install JSON::XS Clone YAML POE # this can take 10 minutes or so
I prefer the latter since it runs a whole bunch of tests. That said, the tests for POE often fail for unimportant reasons, so you end up having to do a force install POE to make it work, so the choice is yours.
You can install with CPAN either as root or as a normal user, if you prefer not to pollute your system environment. If you install as a normal user it's up to you to configure CPAN yourself. You will also need to make sure your PERL5LIB environment variable is set pointing to the correct place afterwards, so the testbed software can find it.
You will also need the POE::Component::Child module. Not all distributions have an RPM for that, so you will probably have to use CPAN to get it installed. This can be tedious sometimes, it's a bit fragile and doesn't declare its dependencies properly.
first, source the env.sh script in this directory. This will put the perl libraries and the Lifecycle.pl script in your PERL5LIB and PATH, respectively. If you've installed Perl modules locally, you can set your PERL5LIB here.
First, you can check your installation is sane by running some of the examples in the examples directory. See the README there for details.
Next, go to the appropriate subdirectory (HEPiX or EBI) and follow the instructions in the README there.