[dancer-users] D2 compatibility with Perl 5.8

[Warren Young]

We recently rejected a plan to migrate to D2 when we discovered that Dancer2::Text::Xslate requires Perl 5.10.  We still have to support 5.8 because we have an existing fleet of CentOS 5 boxes which aren’t going away any time soon.

(Upgrading them in the field is as good as impossible, and we lack a good business reason to have them shipped back to be upgraded.  They won’t go away until our customers just stop using them, or they fall over dead and need to be replaced.)

Is dropping Perl 5.8 support an intentional move?  If so, we’ll have to stick with D1 for years to come.

I know the Modern Perl movement is trying to get beyond 5.8, but the fact is, it was the primary version of Perl for nearly 5 years, so it left a big “pulse” in the timeline that will take a long time to dissipate.

Incidentally, a big factor in our choice to use Dancer 1 was that it still supports Perl 5.8.  We rejected Catalyst and Mojolicious without even evaluating them because they both require Perl 5.10.