If I understand correctly, the current PARI version is quite old. Has anyone tried a more recent release, or is updating it particularly difficult?

Since PARI is updated regularly, it might include improvements that would also benefit computations.

There's always a risk of breaking something when you upgrade to a newer library. The current apps are very stable so I'd rather not change anything unless there is a good reason.

As it turns out, I recently ran some single prime decic cases offline using the latest stable PARI library. There was no noticeable improvement in speed.