Re: Upgrading an existing Debian package Perl module
On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 11:26:37AM -0500, Steve Dondley wrote:
> 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.
This is likely to be the approach favoured by those on this list, as
we live in a Debian world. Upstream developers may recommend that you
stick to manually installed versions, or something else. I'd encourage
you to also raise this question with the software authors, so that you can
get a full picture of the issues with this particular software.
> 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.
Using cpan/cpanm et all is not necessarily a bad idea if it meets your
requirements for having very up to date versions. The versions of those
tools shipped by Debian should not do anything to your Debian system
which would break it, since they *should* cause files to be installed either
in /usr/local, which is under the purview of the sysadmin, or into a user
home directory.
Installing Debian unstable would be another way of fulfilling the latest
and greatest need, but is recommended for a novice sysadmin (at least for
any system you need to keep running).
> 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.
I appreciate that this is a complex topic and I will attempt to help where
I can. As ever there are rarely straightforward answers to these kinds of
questions, as it depends on your use case.
So far you haven't mentioned any particular requirement to have a newer
version than is available in Debian stable, so my personal advice would
be to stick with what you have until that changes. If it does change,
I hope I've given enough information in these two posts to help you
decide.
And I hope that we can get the Dancer package in Debian improved so that
it doesn't mislead others into automatically advising them that they
should use CPAN to upgrade.
Cheers,
Dominic.
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