[Slackbuilds-users] perl-Astro-SunTime - source download not found

[Chris Novakovic]

On 20/10/2017 10:55, Thomas Szteliga wrote:
> There's a problem with perl-Astro-SunTime
> <https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/perl/perl-Astro-SunTime>
> 
> the source download url returns 404:
> <http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/R/RO/ROBF/Astro-SunTime-0.01.tar.gz>

Perl module authors are able (and are encouraged) to delete old versions
of their modules from the main PAUSE server. Most mirrors will also
mirror deletions of files, but some (most notably BackPAN) keep
permanent records of all files ever uploaded to PAUSE.

If you really need Astro-Suntime 0.01, it can be found here:

http://backpan.cpantesters.org/authors/id/R/RO/ROBF/Astro-SunTime-0.01.tar.gz

although using a version that's currently on the main PAUSE server
instead is a better idea, because the deletion of an old tarball usually
indicates that (a) the old version is very old indeed, (b) there's a
nasty bug in the old version that's been fixed in a more recent version,
and/or (c) the author is no longer willing to maintain the old version
for whatever reason.

I think I've said this before, but it might be worth using BackPAN (or
MetaCPAN, which has the same archive-forever policy as BackPAN with the
added advantage of being available over HTTPS) as the source URL for all
Perl modules, to stop this from happening.

[1] http://backpan.cpantesters.org
[2] https://metacpan.org