3 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.11.1
7 This document describes differences between the 5.11.0 release and
10 =head1 Incompatible Changes
14 =item The boolkeys op moved to the group of hash ops. This breaks binary compatibility.
16 =item C<\s> C<\w> and C<\d> once again have the semantics they had in Perl 5.8.x.
21 =head1 Core Enhancements
23 =head2 Add C<package NAME VERSION> syntax
25 This patch adds support for setting the $VERSION of a namespace
26 when the namespace is declared with 'package'. It eliminates the
27 need for 'our $VERSION = ...' and similar constructs. E.g.
29 package Foo::Bar 1.23;
30 # $Foo::Bar::VERSION == 1.23
32 There are several advantages to this:
34 * VERSION is parsed in *exactly* the same way as 'use NAME VERSION'
36 * $VERSION is set at compile time
38 * Eliminates '$VERSION = ...' and 'eval $VERSION' clutter
40 * As it requires VERSION to be a numeric literal or v-string
41 literal, it can be statically parsed by toolchain modules
42 without 'eval' the way MM->parse_version does for '$VERSION = ...'
44 * Alpha versions with underscores do not need to be quoted; static
45 parsing will preserve the underscore, but during compilation, Perl
46 will remove underscores as it does for all numeric literals
48 During development of this, there was discussion on #corehackers and
49 elsewhere that this should also allow other metadata to be set such as
50 "status" (stable/alpha) or "author/authority". On reflection, those
51 metadata are not very well defined yet and likely should never be
52 encoded into Perl core parsing so they can be freely changed in the
53 future. (They could perhaps be achieved via a comment on the same line
54 as 'package NAME VERSION'.)
56 Version numbers, however, already have a very specific definition and
57 use defined in the core through 'use NAME VERSION'. This patch merely
58 provides appropriate symmetry for setting $VERSION with the exact same
59 parsing and semantics as 'use'.
61 It does not break old code with only 'package NAME', but code that
62 uses 'package NAME VERSION' will need to be restricted to perl 5.11.X.
63 This is analogous to the change to open() from two-args to three-args.
64 Users requiring the latest Perl will benefit, and perhaps N years from
65 now it will become standard practice when Perl 5.12 is targeted the
66 way that 5.6 is today.
68 The patch does not prevent 'package NAME VERSION' from being used
69 multiple times for the same package with different version numbers, but
70 nothing prevents $VERSION from being modified arbitrarily at runtime,
71 either, so I see no urgen reason to add limitations or warnings so
72 long as Perl uses a global $VERSION variable for package version
75 I am posting this patch to the p5p list for discussion and review. If
76 there seems to be general assent (or lack of dissent), I will go ahead
77 and commit the patch to blead.
80 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
82 =head2 Updated Modules
86 =item Upgrade to Test-Simple-0.94
88 =item Upgrade to Storable-2.21
90 =item Upgrade to Pod-Simple-3.08
92 =item Upgrade to Parse-CPAN-Meta-1.40
94 =item Upgrade to ExtUtils-Manifest-1.57
96 =item Upgrade to ExtUtils-CBuilder-0.260301
98 =item Upgrade to CGI.pm-3.48
100 =item Update CPANPLUS to CPAN version 0.89_02
102 =item Upgrade to threads::shared 1.32
104 =item Update ExtUtils::ParseXS to 2.21
106 =item Upgrade File::Path to 2.08 (and add taint.t test)
108 =item Upgrade Module::CoreList to 2.20
110 =item Updated Object-Accessor to CPAN version 0.36
114 =head1 New Documentation
118 =item L<pod/perlpolicy.pod> extends the "Social contract about contributed modules" into the beginnings of a document on Perl porting policies.
122 =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
126 =item Documentation for C<$1> in perlvar.pod clarified
130 =head1 Performance Enhancements
134 =item C<if (%foo)> has been optimized to be faster than C<if (keys %foo)>
138 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
140 XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
143 =head2 Platform Specific Changes
147 =item Darwin (Mac OS X)
151 =item Skip testing the be_BY.CP1131 locale on Darwin 10 (Mac OS X 10.6),
154 =item Correct infelicities in the regexp used to identify buggy locales
155 on Darwin 8 and 9 (Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, respectively).
163 =item Fix thread library selection [perl #69686]
171 =item Initial support for mingw64 is now available
178 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
182 =item Perl now properly returns a syntax error instead of segfaulting
183 if C<each>, C<keys> or C<values> is used without an argument
185 =item C<tell()> now fails properly if called without an argument and when no previous file was read
187 C<tell()> now returns C<-1>, and sets errno to C<EBADF>, thus restoring the 5.8.x behaviour
189 =item overload no longer implicitly unsets fallback on repeated 'use overload' lines
191 =item POSIX::strftime() can now handle Unicode characters in the format string.
193 =item The Windows select() implementation now supports all empty C<fd_set>s more correctly.
197 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
202 =item The 'syntax' category was removed from 5 warnings that should only be in 'deprecated'.
204 =item Three fatal pack/unpack error messages have been normalized to "panic: %s"
206 =item "Unicode character is illegal" has been rephrased to be more accurate
208 It now reads C<Unicode non-character is illegal in interchange> and the
209 perldiag documentation has been expanded a bit.
211 =item Perl now defaults to issuing a warning if a deprecated language feature is used.
213 To disable this feature in a given lexical scope, you should use C<no
214 warnings 'deprecated';> For information about which language features
215 are deprecated and explanations of various deprecation warnings, please
224 =item Significant cleanups to core tests to ensure that language and
225 interpreter features are not used before they're tested.
227 =item F<t/porting/podcheck.t> automatically checks the well-formedness of
228 POD found in all .pl, .pm and .pod files in the F<MANIFEST>, other than in
229 dual-lifed modules which are primarily maintained outside the Perl core.
231 =item F<t/porting/manifest.t> now tests that all files listed in MANIFEST are present.
235 =head1 Known Problems
239 =item Untriaged test crashes on Windows 2000
241 Several porters have reported mysterious crashes when Perl's entire test suite is run after a build on certain Windows 2000 systems. When run by hand, the individual tests reportedly work fine.
243 =item Known test failures on VMS
245 Perl 5.11.1 fails a small set of core and CPAN tests as of this release.
246 With luck, that'll be sorted out for 5.11.2
254 =item The Perl 5.11.0 release notes incorrectly described 'delete local'
258 =head1 Acknowledgements
260 XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
263 =head1 Reporting Bugs
265 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
266 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
267 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
268 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
270 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
271 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
272 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
273 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
274 analysed by the Perl porting team.
276 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
277 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
278 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
279 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
280 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
281 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
282 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
283 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
288 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
291 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
293 The F<README> file for general stuff.
295 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
299 This is all changes through 6609e0408cfa30e0d5c739e4c818f8591c88c0bc