Test failures with 2.1.0

[Grinnz]

Release 2.1.0 is failing tests on my system (and there are some other failing reports on cpantesters, but not consistently), the errors seem related mainly to finding template files.

https://www.cpantesters.org/cpan/report/c12e9f60-2052-11f1-aa81-9acf868642b9

[xsawyerx]

Uh oh! These are a LOT of failures.

I posted a fix in this PR. I can't reproduce these failures on my machine. @Grinnz, maybe you could test it and let me know if it works now?

[nicolasfranck]

Not sure if this is related: in Dancer2 plugins the method $self->dsl returns undef, so I cannot access any DSL functionality anymore (e.g. $self->dsl->var, $self->dsl->session ..). I tried returning to version 2.0.1 but for some reason, during carton install, that resolves now to Dancer-2.000001 (even I putrequires "Dancer2", "==v2.0.1";). The package contains Dancer2 files, but they work differently, and the author is SUKRIA instead of CROMEDOME (as stated by metacpan).

[cromedome]

@nicolasfranck I think this is related to a different issue. Can you create a new GH Issue for this, with a minimal test case to reproduce what you are seeing? I can try and create one, but if you did, it would help speed up the time it takes to resolve this. Thanks!

[cromedome]

@Grinnz How can I reproduce the build failures? I built a clean Perl and tried to install only Dancer2 and just the dependencies it needs, and I cannot produce the errors you are reporting.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide.

[Grinnz]

I can't say for sure. All I did is install Perl 5.42.1 in plenv, and then attempt to install Dancer2 in it with cpanm.

[wolfsage]

FWIW I can reproduce these failures with:

DANCER_VIEWS=~/bahasdfasf DANCER_PUBLIC=~/bahzdxfasd perl -Ilib  t/auto_page.t 

@Grinnz's linked output says:

[App::ShowErrorsCircRef:2150902] error @2026-03-15 00:13:04> Route exception: /home/grinnz/views/I don't exist.tt is not a regular file or reference

which maybe suggests these ENV params are set. Failing that being true, maybe the code responsible for finding the correct directories is wonky.

[wolfsage]

Ah, no. Dancer2::Core::Role::HasLocation::_build_location recurses up the tree (up to 10 tries) until it reaches the root directory.
It looks for either:

• A directory with bin/ and lib/
• A directory containing a .dancer file

If I create a ~/.dancer file, tests fail. If I remove that and mkdir ~/bin and ~/lib, tests fail.

[wolfsage]

It looks like 2.0.0 had a bug where the 1..10 loop would always look in "." and never go up a directory. With 2.1.0 it actually traverses up to the root.

Going higher than the current directory seems strange to me, but also the existence of "lib" and "bin" to identify the directory containing dancer files doesn't seem strong enough IMO

[Grinnz]

I do indeed have ~/bin and ~/lib directories

[xsawyerx]

I can't recreate these failures on my Linux machines. :/ I'm not sure what the differences are.

[wolfsage]

Curious. Does this repro for you:

$ cpanm --look Dancer2

$ perl -Ilib -MDancer2::Core::Role::HasLocation -E '$x = bless { caller => "t/foo" }, "Dancer2::Core::Role::HasLocation"; say $x->_build_location()'
# /home/alh/.cpanm/work/1774987885.1624894/Dancer2-2.1.0/t

$ perl -Ilib t/auto_page.t
# (passes)

$ mkdir bin

$ perl -Ilib -MDancer2::Core::Role::HasLocation -E '$x = bless { caller => "t/foo" }, "Dancer2::Core::Role::HasLocation"; say $x->_build_location()'
# /home/alh/.cpanm/work/1774987885.1624894/Dancer2-2.1.0

$ perl -Ilib t/auto_page.t
# (fails)

The trick here is _build_location() traverses up the tree to root and finds bin and lib in the same directory and assumes that is the build directory, and then tests fail. Putting a bunch of printf debugging in there might show what's up