Re: Upgrading an existing Debian package Perl module

Hi, thanks for getting back.

I got the message from Dancer 2 after running a command to install a sample App:

steve@nginxdancer:/var/www/html$ sudo dancer2 -a MyWeb::App

The latest stable Dancer2 release is 0.205002, you are currently using 0.204002.

Please check http://search.cpan.org/dist/Dancer2/ for updates.

! MyWeb-App/.dancer exists, overwrite? [N/y/a]: y

+ MyWeb-App/.dancer

! MyWeb-App/config.yml exists, overwrite? [N/y/a]: a

+ MyWeb-App/config.yml

+ MyWeb-App/MANIFEST.SKIP

<--snip-->

There is no urgency to this. I'm just kicking the tires of Dancer 2. It's just that I have long been confused about how to properly install (and in this case, upgrade) Perl modules on Debian. I know the best advice is to only use those Perl packages that have been packaged by Debian.

I have used cpan before but I'm told that's not a good idea on Debian. I'm not sure how sound that advice is or what the risk is. I'm not a very knowledgeable sysadmin and find all of this kind of intimidating. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. It's bothered me for years and I figured I'd ask people who really knew what they were talking about. There seems to be all kinds of conflicting information and advice out there.

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 11:15 AM, Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 10:47:37AM -0500, Steve Dondley wrote:
> Hi, sorry if this isn't the place for newbies but I figured I'd ask the
> real pros.
>
> I installed Dancer 2 on my system:
> https://packages.debian.org/source/stable/libdancer2-perl
>
> It's running version 0.204002. The Dancer2 software is telling me that the
> latest version is 0.205002.
> What is the proper way to upgrade this module on my Debian Stretch machine?

Dear Steve,

In general, packages in Debian stable aren't updated with upstream
versions during the life of the stable distribution, but if you need a
specific bugfix it's definitely worth filing a bug about this in the
Debian bug tracker[1] in case it can be fixed in a stable release.

If you want to use newer features, then we could consider making a Debian
backport[2], but this would need additional ongoing volunteer effort and
so we'd need to have a clear idea of what the use case was for this.

Otherwise, you could also choose to install Dancer into /usr/local using
the 'native' tools such as cpanm. If you did this, then the module
would obviously not be supported by Debian any more.

I am interested to hear that Dancer itself tells you about newer versions.
Can you clarify where you are seeing this? If it's the software itself,
it might be appropriate for us to modify the package to give Debian-specific
advice.

Best,
Dominic.

[1] <https://bugs.debian.org/>
[2] <https://backports.debian.org/>