Features/perl5.12

= Perl 5.12 =

Summary
Perl 5.12 brings a lot of changes. Details about them could be found at perl [delta]

Owner

 * Name: Marcela Mašláňová
 * email: 

Current status

 * Targeted release:  Fedora 14
 * Last updated: 2010-06-09
 * Percentage of completion: 100%

Completed items

 * rewritten spec for perl 5.12
 * rebuild all perl modules and some related packages

Detailed Description
Perl releases will be now every year and updates during year will be containing mainly bug fixes. The release 5.12.1 should be stable release.

Benefit to Fedora
Fedora as bleeding edge distribution should be shipping new release of perl as one of the first distributions.

Scope
Everything will be rebuilt in testing buildroot dist-f14-perltest. 'make build TARGET=dist-f14-perltest'
 * update perl to 5.12.1
 * update/fix/rebuild all perl modules
 * rebuild all other dependent packages -> file bugs to maintainers
 * in case no basic component is broken, then the packages could be tagged into dist-f14 buildroot

How To Test
Download packages from koji's buildroot dist-f14-perltest or try your packages with rebuild build requirements related to perl.

User Experience
User could notice warnings about soon to be removed modules e.g. Class::ISA will be removed, install from CPAN and errors in syntax e.g. defined(%hash) isn't supported anymore. These warnings are fixed in Fedora's modules, but it could be still found in users scripts.

Dependencies
repoquery --whatrequires --alldeps 'perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.1?.?)' | sort -u

Contingency Plan
In case some essential packages couldn't be fixed, then would be used perl-5.10.?.

Some packages seem to be unfixable, therefore they should be removed if they don't have any other dependencies.

Documentation

 * changes between 5.10.1 and 5.12.x http://perldoc.perl.org/perldelta.html
 * updated packaging guidelines https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDraft:Perl
 * how to update modules and dual-lived modules: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Perl/updates

Release Notes
Notable changes in Perl 5.12 include:


 * Perl now conforms much more closely to the Unicode standard. Additionally, this release includes an upgrade to version 5.2 of the standard.


 * New experimental APIs allow developers to extend Perl with "pluggable" keywords and syntax.


 * Perl now has a better sense of time and will be able to keep accurate time well past the "Y2038" barrier.


 * New syntax allows developers to specify package version numbers directly in "package" statements


 * Perl now warns the user about the use of deprecated features by default.

Perl 5.12.x features numerous new features, optimizations and bugfixes. You can find a complete list of these changes on the web at:

http://search.cpan.org/~jesse/perl-5.12.0/pod/perl5120delta.pod

Original release note: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2010/04/msg158820.html

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/perl5.12