Perl 5.8 on Debian

crenz has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a webserver where I'm running a few projects that make fairly extensive use of Perl's Unicode features. The server is running on Debian stable, so unfortunately this means I have to work with Perl 5.6.1.

I am slowly getting very fed up with 5.6.1's Unicode support and definitely want to switch to a 5.8 version. However, as far as I know (confirmed by the SVK Wiki), there is no 5.8 for Debian stable, so I only seem to have three alternatives:

Move the whole server to Debian unstable, losing security updates
Install Perl from source, but going well beyond Install parallel Perl on Debian because on top of that, I have to install Apache and mod_perl from source as well!
Wait till Debian Sarge is released... in a year. Or two. Or three.

All three alternatives sound rather scary (although the second one less so, since I'm a bit security-minded). Any hints how I should go about this problem?

Comment on Perl 5.8 on Debian

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Re: Perl 5.8 on Debian by tlm (Prior) on Apr 06, 2005 at 10:06 UTC
BTW, you don't need to switch the entire server to testing (or unstable); you can just upgrade perl. Try `[sudo or whatever] apt-get install perl/testing` [download] the lowliest monk	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Perl 5.8 on Debian by Joost (Canon) on Apr 06, 2005 at 11:49 UTC
For a production server, I would probably go with this option, or install a seperate perl in /usr/local. FYI, for development, I have perl/testing and a custom perl build in /usr/local with DEBUGGING switched on. "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]
Re^2: Perl 5.8 on Debian by crouchingpenguin (Priest) on Apr 06, 2005 at 12:33 UTC
Or even `apt-get build-dep --compile perl && apt-get source --compile perl` [download] with `deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main or deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main` [download] cp ---- "Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic."	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Perl 5.8 on Debian by crenz (Priest) on Apr 06, 2005 at 13:00 UTC
Thanks, that sounds like a viable option. That way, I can install perl, Apache and mod_perl from testing. Of course, there are still some security issues, but at least I only have a few packages to watch, not a whole system.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl 5.8 on Debian by gam3 (Curate) on Apr 07, 2005 at 12:58 UTC
You might find this page on Using APT with more than 2 sources helpful. -- gam3 A picture is worth a thousand words, but takes 200K.	[reply]
Re: Perl 5.8 on Debian by borisz (Canon) on Apr 06, 2005 at 10:46 UTC
I install a recent perl in another location and make that the default. So any change to the distribution does not affect perl anymore. Boris	[reply]
Other alternatives by dave0 (Friar) on Apr 06, 2005 at 14:11 UTC
In Debian, you can pull packages from multiple sources, so you might¹ be able to get your base OS from 'stable' and pull certain packages from 'testing' or 'unstable'. See http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html for information on setting this up. Rather than using testing or unstable, you might be able to find some of the packages you need at http://www.backports.org. Not Perl, though, but they do have Apache2. A nice middle ground between building everything from upstream sources, or suffering through outdated packages might be to build your own .deb packages of perl 5.8.x and its dependancies. I haven't tried this for something as complex as Perl or Apache, but for many other packages it's a simple matter of downloading the source packages from 'unstable' and rebuilding them on 'stable'. 1 - I say "might", because doing so might require upgrading the dependancies of Perl and Apache to the versions from 'testing', at which point you're basically better off just switching the entire thing rather than trying to track a 'stable' base and 'testing' for your apps.	[reply]
Re: Perl 5.8 on Debian by tlm (Prior) on Apr 06, 2005 at 10:02 UTC
How about Debian testing? the lowliest monk	[reply]
Debian Testing Vs Unstable by dorward (Curate) on Apr 06, 2005 at 11:47 UTC
Debian Testing also fails to get security updates. The situation there is actually worse then Unstable since it only contains packages that have been in Unstable without serious bug reports for a certain period of time.	[reply]
Re: Debian Testing Vs Unstable by tlm (Prior) on Apr 06, 2005 at 11:58 UTC
Yes; I was thinking all along about just upgrading to perl/testing; I should have been clearer. the lowliest monk	[reply]
Re: Perl 5.8 on Debian by vladdrak (Monk) on Apr 07, 2005 at 08:06 UTC
Well, security.debian.org does in fact host sarge debs. They aren't first priority, woody gets patched first, but sarge is close (cough) to becoming stable, and so the security team is more on the ball these days. Add this to your sources.list: `deb http://security.debian.org/ sarge/updates main contrib non-free` [download] You could also crossgrade to Ubuntu..	[reply] [d/l]
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