Dancer2 0.204001 is on its way to a CPAN mirror near you. There are several important updates in this release that are worth noting:

• Support for Perl 5.8 support has been restored. We used a named capture in a regex in resolving an issue in Dancer2 0.204000 and in the process, made Dancer2 unusable on Perl 5.8. This has been fixed. Thanks veryrusty!

• Dancer2 0.204000 unintentionally required that Test::Perl::Critic be installed, and that we pass Perl::Critic tests to install properly. This has been reverted. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The full changelog is here:

0.204001  2016-10-17 08:29:00-05:00 America/Chicago

[ BUG FIXES ]
* Restore 5.8 support (fix test which required captures).
  (Russell @veryrusty Jenkins)
* PR #1271: fix wrong regex check against $_ (Mickey Nasriachi)

[ ENHANCEMENTS ]
* GH #1262: Add 'encode_json' and 'decode_json' DSL, which are
  recommended instead of 'to_json' and 'from_json'.
  (Dennis @episodeiv lichtenthäler)

[ DOCUMENTATION ]
* Fix some typos.(Dennis @episodeiv lichtenthäler)
* GH #1031: Remove D2::Core::Context remnants from docs.
  (Sawyer X)

[ PACKAGING ]
* GH #1273: Do not require Test::Perl::Critic to install.
  (Dennis lichtenthäler)

Thanks to Dennis @episodeiv Lichtenthäler for contributing to this release.

Happy Dancing!

Fresh off of Perl.Dance 2016 is Dancer2 0.204000. The latest version of Dancer2 is on its way to a CPAN mirror near you.

This version brings some compelling enhancements and features:

• Improved configuration handling (Jonathan Duff):

You can now create a local version of your configuration files which you then do not need to commit to any repository. If you create a file called config_local.yml, you will have a local config.yml. You can do the same with any configuration file, just change the filename to end with _local.

You can now set the DANCER_CONFIG_EXT environment variable in order to only load configuration files of a particular type (such as JSON). For example: DANCER_CONFIG_EXT=json plackup bin/app.psgi

You can now get some diagnostics information about loaded conifguration files by setting the DANCER_CONFIG_VERBOSE environment variable to a true value.

• Improved static content caching:

Plack::Middleware::Static does not, out of the box, send a 304 Not Modified status for static resources that have not changed since they were last requested. By using Plack::Middleware::Conditional and Plack::Middleware::ConditionalGET, we were able to improve caching for users without a front-end static proxy (Theo van Hoesel).

• Dependencies have been moved from dist.ini to cpanfile, allowing developers to use [Carton] (https://metacpan.org/pod/Carton) to easily deploy and run Dancer2 apps entirely from a local or deployment directory.

• If you want to create a sample application skeleton that uses Template Toolkit-style variable markers ([% %]), you can now do so. App skeletons now use [d2% %2d] for variables that Dancer2 needs to produce new application skeletons. Thanks, Jason Lewis!

• If you need full control of the evals run by Dancer2 (if, for example, you write an eval frame unrolling code), you can now provide your own code to be run via $EVAL_SHIM. Thanks to Yves Orton (demerphq) for contributing!

• Numerous bug fixes and documentation improvements.

The full changelog is as follows:

0.204000  2016-10-10 20:56:51-05:00 America/Chicago

[ BUG FIXES ]
* GH #1255: Fix hook overriding in plugin. (Yves Orton)
* GH #1191: Named capture prior to dispatch breaks dispatch.
  (Yves Orton)
* GH #1235: Clean up descriptions for HTTP codes 303 and 305.
  (Yanick Champoux)
* Remove duplicate (and errornous) 451 error message.
  (Sawyer X)
* GH #1116, #1245: Ensure cached Hash::MultiValue parameters are cloned
  into the new request. (Russell @veryrusty Jenkins)
[ ENHANCEMENTS ]
* You can now provide a $EVAL_SHIM to Dancer2::Core::App in order
  to have custom code run on eval{} calls. One example of this
  is to handle proper counting of stack frames when you want to
  unwind/unroll the stack for custom error reporting.
  (Yves Orton)
* Added a cpanfile to allow installing local dependencies with 
  carton. (Mickey Nasriachi)
* GH #1260: Specify optional charset to send_file and send_as
  (Russell @veryrusty Jenkins)
* PR #1162: Change skeleton template tags so skeletons can generate
  applications that use Template Toolkit default tags (Jason Lewis)
* GH #1149: Fix config loading inconsistencies, support local config
  files in addition to standard Dancer conf files (Jonathan Scott Duff)
* PR #1269: Stash decoded body_parameters separately from those 
  in Plack::Request (Russell @veryrusty Jenkins)
* GH #1253: Static middleware should send 304 Not Modified to enable
  intermediate level caching. (Russell @veryrusty Jenkins)
[ DOCUMENTATION ]
* GH #608: Remove extra general COPYRIGHT notice in Tutorial.
  (Sawyer X)
* Simplify upload example. (Alberto Simões, Sawyer X)

Thanks to all the sponsors, attendees, and speakers who participated in this year’s Dancer conference, Perl.Dance 2016. It was another highly successful conference, and we are already looking forward to next year’s gathering. We are currently working on the videos of this year’s talks, and hope to have them uploaded shortly.

If you have any questions, please find us at irc.perl.org#dancer. Happy Dancing!