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9a7a3243 1=head1 NAME
2
9a7a3243 3perldelta - what is new for perl v5.11.1
4
5=head1 DESCRIPTION
6
7This document describes differences between the 5.11.0 release and
8the 5.11.1 release.
9
9a7a3243 10=head1 Incompatible Changes
11
8f3d5996 12=over
9a7a3243 13
8f3d5996 14=item The boolkeys op moved to the group of hash ops. This breaks binary compatibility.
9a7a3243 15
8f3d5996 16=back
17
9a7a3243 18=head1 Core Enhancements
19
8f3d5996 20=head2 Add C<package NAME VERSION> syntax
21
22 This patch adds support for setting the $VERSION of a namespace
23 when the namespace is declared with 'package'. It eliminates the
24 need for 'our $VERSION = ...' and similar constructs. E.g.
25
26 package Foo::Bar 1.23;
27 # $Foo::Bar::VERSION == 1.23
9a7a3243 28
8f3d5996 29 There are several advantages to this:
30
31 * VERSION is parsed in *exactly* the same way as 'use NAME VERSION'
32
33 * $VERSION is set at compile time
34
35 * Eliminates '$VERSION = ...' and 'eval $VERSION' clutter
36
37 * As it requires VERSION to be a numeric literal or v-string
38 literal, it can be statically parsed by toolchain modules
39 without 'eval' the way MM->parse_version does for '$VERSION = ...'
40
41 * Alpha versions with underscores do not need to be quoted; static
42 parsing will preserve the underscore, but during compilation, Perl
43 will remove underscores as it does for all numeric literals
44
45 During development of this, there was discussion on #corehackers and
46 elsewhere that this should also allow other metadata to be set such as
47 "status" (stable/alpha) or "author/authority". On reflection, those
48 metadata are not very well defined yet and likely should never be
49 encoded into Perl core parsing so they can be freely changed in the
50 future. (They could perhaps be achieved via a comment on the same line
51 as 'package NAME VERSION'.)
52
53 Version numbers, however, already have a very specific definition and
54 use defined in the core through 'use NAME VERSION'. This patch merely
55 provides appropriate symmetry for setting $VERSION with the exact same
56 parsing and semantics as 'use'.
57
58 It does not break old code with only 'package NAME', but code that
59 uses 'package NAME VERSION' will need to be restricted to perl 5.11.X.
60 This is analogous to the change to open() from two-args to three-args.
61 Users requiring the latest Perl will benefit, and perhaps N years from
62 now it will become standard practice when Perl 5.12 is targeted the
63 way that 5.6 is today.
64
65 The patch does not prevent 'package NAME VERSION' from being used
66 multiple times for the same package with different version numbers, but
67 nothing prevents $VERSION from being modified arbitrarily at runtime,
68 either, so I see no urgen reason to add limitations or warnings so
69 long as Perl uses a global $VERSION variable for package version
70 numbers.
71
72 I am posting this patch to the p5p list for discussion and review. If
73 there seems to be general assent (or lack of dissent), I will go ahead
74 and commit the patch to blead.
9a7a3243 75
9a7a3243 76
77=head1 Modules and Pragmata
78
90b948c5 79=head2 Updated Modules
80
8f3d5996 81=over 4
82
83=item Upgrade to Test-Simple-0.94
84
85=item Upgrade to Storable-2.21
86
87=item Upgrade to Pod-Simple-3.08
88
89=item Upgrade to Parse-CPAN-Meta-1.40
90
91=item Upgrade to ExtUtils-Manifest-1.57
92
93=item Upgrade to ExtUtils-CBuilder-0.260301
94
95=item Upgrade to CGI.pm-3.48
96
97=item Update CPANPLUS to CPAN version 0.89_02
98
99=item Upgrade to threads::shared 1.32
100
101=item Update ExtUtils::ParseXS to 2.21
102
103=item Upgrade File::Path to 2.08 (and add taint.t test)
104
105=item Upgrade Module::CoreList to 2.20
106
107=item Updated Object-Accessor to CPAN version 0.36
108
109=back
9a7a3243 110
9a7a3243 111=head1 New Documentation
112
9a7a3243 113=over 4
114
8f3d5996 115=item L<pod/perlpolicy.pod> extends the "Social contract about contributed modules" into the beginnings of a document on Perl porting policies.
9a7a3243 116
117=back
118
119=head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
120
8f3d5996 121=over
122
123=item Documentation for C<$1> in perlvar.pod clarified
9a7a3243 124
8f3d5996 125=back
9a7a3243 126
127=head1 Performance Enhancements
128
9a7a3243 129=over 4
130
8f3d5996 131=item C<if (%foo)> has been optimized to be faster than C<if (keys %foo)>
9a7a3243 132
9a7a3243 133=back
134
135=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
136
137XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
138go here.
139
9a7a3243 140=head2 Platform Specific Changes
141
142=over 4
143
8f3d5996 144=item Darwin (Mac OS X)
145
146=over 4
147
148=item Skip testing the be_BY.CP1131 locale on Darwin 10 (Mac OS X 10.6),
149as it's still buggy.
150
151=item Correct infelicities in the regexp used to identify buggy locales
152on Darwin 8 and 9 (Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, respectively).
153
154=back
155
156=item DragonFly BSD
157
158=over 4
159
160=item Fix thread library selection [perl #69686]
161
162=back
163
164=item Win32
165
166=over 4
167
168=item Initial support for mingw64 is now available
169
170=back
9a7a3243 171
9a7a3243 172
173=back
174
175=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
176
9a7a3243 177=over 4
178
8f3d5996 179=item Perl now properly returns a syntax error instead of segfaulting
180if C<each>, C<keys> or C<values> is used without an argument
9a7a3243 181
8f3d5996 182=item C<tell()> now fails properly if called without an argument and when no previous file was read
183
184C<tell()> now returns C<-1>, and sets errno to C<EBADF>, thus restoring the 5.8.x behaviour
185
186=item overload no longer implicitly unsets fallback on repeated 'use overload' lines
9a7a3243 187
90b948c5 188=item POSIX::strftime() can now handle Unicode characters in the format string.
189
546378fe 190=item The Windows select() implementation now supports all empty C<fd_set>s more correctly.
90b948c5 191
9a7a3243 192=back
193
194=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
195
9a7a3243 196=over 4
197
9a7a3243 198
8f3d5996 199=item The 'syntax' category was removed from 5 warnings that should only be in 'deprecated'.
200
201=item Three fatal pack/unpack error messages have been normalized to "panic: %s"
202
203=item "Unicode character is illegal" has been rephrased to be more accurate
204
205It now reads C<Unicode non-character is illegal in interchange> and the
206perldiag documentation has been expanded a bit.
207
208=item Perl now defaults to issuing a warning if a deprecated language feature is used.
209
210To disable this feature in a given lexical scope, you should use C<no
211warnings 'deprecated';> For information about which language features
212are deprecated and explanations of various deprecation warnings, please
213see L<perldiag.pod>
9a7a3243 214
215=back
216
6609e040 217=head1 Testing
9a7a3243 218
9a7a3243 219=over 4
220
8f3d5996 221=item Significant cleanups to core tests to ensure that language and
222interpreter features are not used before they're tested.
9a7a3243 223
8f3d5996 224=item F<t/porting/podcheck.t> automatically checks the well-formedness of
225POD found in all .pl, .pm and .pod files in the F<MANIFEST>, other than in
226dual-lifed modules which are primarily maintained outside the Perl core.
227
228=item F<t/porting/manifest.t> now tests that all files listed in MANIFEST are present.
9a7a3243 229
230=back
231
232=head1 Known Problems
233
234XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any
235tests that had to be C<TODO>ed for the release would be noted here, unless
236they were specific to a particular platform (see below).
237
238This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
239from either 5.10.1 or 5.11.0.
240
241=over 4
242
243=item *
244
245XXX
246
247=back
248
8f3d5996 249=head1 Errata
250
2cf7e86b 251=over
8f3d5996 252
90b948c5 253=item The Perl 5.11.0 release notes incorrectly described 'delete local'
8f3d5996 254
2cf7e86b 255=back
9a7a3243 256
257=head1 Acknowledgements
258
259XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
260
261
262=head1 Reporting Bugs
263
264If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
265recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
266bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
267information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
268
269If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
270program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
271to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
272output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
273analysed by the Perl porting team.
274
275If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
276inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
277it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
278unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
279to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
280co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
281platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
282security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
283distributed on CPAN.
284
285=head1 SEE ALSO
286
287The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
288on what changed.
289
290The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
291
292The F<README> file for general stuff.
293
294The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
295
296=cut
6609e040 297
fb0bad2e 298This is all changes through 6609e0408cfa30e0d5c739e4c818f8591c88c0bc
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