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.
18 =head1 Core Enhancements
20 =head2 Add C<package NAME VERSION> syntax
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.
26 package Foo::Bar 1.23;
27 # $Foo::Bar::VERSION == 1.23
29 There are several advantages to this:
31 * VERSION is parsed in *exactly* the same way as 'use NAME VERSION'
33 * $VERSION is set at compile time
35 * Eliminates '$VERSION = ...' and 'eval $VERSION' clutter
37 * As it requires VERSION to be a numeric literal or v-string
38 literal, it can be statically parsed by toolchain modules
39 without 'eval' the way MM->parse_version does for '$VERSION = ...'
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
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'.)
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'.
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.
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
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.
77 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
79 =head2 Updated Modules
83 =item Upgrade to Test-Simple-0.94
85 =item Upgrade to Storable-2.21
87 =item Upgrade to Pod-Simple-3.08
89 =item Upgrade to Parse-CPAN-Meta-1.40
91 =item Upgrade to ExtUtils-Manifest-1.57
93 =item Upgrade to ExtUtils-CBuilder-0.260301
95 =item Upgrade to CGI.pm-3.48
97 =item Update CPANPLUS to CPAN version 0.89_02
99 =item Upgrade to threads::shared 1.32
101 =item Update ExtUtils::ParseXS to 2.21
103 =item Upgrade File::Path to 2.08 (and add taint.t test)
105 =item Upgrade Module::CoreList to 2.20
107 =item Updated Object-Accessor to CPAN version 0.36
111 =head1 New Documentation
115 =item L<pod/perlpolicy.pod> extends the "Social contract about contributed modules" into the beginnings of a document on Perl porting policies.
119 =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
123 =item Documentation for C<$1> in perlvar.pod clarified
127 =head1 Performance Enhancements
131 =item C<if (%foo)> has been optimized to be faster than C<if (keys %foo)>
135 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
137 XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
140 =head2 Platform Specific Changes
144 =item Darwin (Mac OS X)
148 =item Skip testing the be_BY.CP1131 locale on Darwin 10 (Mac OS X 10.6),
151 =item Correct infelicities in the regexp used to identify buggy locales
152 on Darwin 8 and 9 (Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, respectively).
160 =item Fix thread library selection [perl #69686]
168 =item Initial support for mingw64 is now available
175 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
179 =item Perl now properly returns a syntax error instead of segfaulting
180 if C<each>, C<keys> or C<values> is used without an argument
182 =item C<tell()> now fails properly if called without an argument and when no previous file was read
184 C<tell()> now returns C<-1>, and sets errno to C<EBADF>, thus restoring the 5.8.x behaviour
186 =item overload no longer implicitly unsets fallback on repeated 'use overload' lines
188 =item POSIX::strftime() can now handle Unicode characters in the format string.
190 =item The winsock select() implementation now supports all empty C<fd_set>s more correctly.
194 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
199 =item The 'syntax' category was removed from 5 warnings that should only be in 'deprecated'.
201 =item Three fatal pack/unpack error messages have been normalized to "panic: %s"
203 =item "Unicode character is illegal" has been rephrased to be more accurate
205 It now reads C<Unicode non-character is illegal in interchange> and the
206 perldiag documentation has been expanded a bit.
208 =item Perl now defaults to issuing a warning if a deprecated language feature is used.
210 To disable this feature in a given lexical scope, you should use C<no
211 warnings 'deprecated';> For information about which language features
212 are deprecated and explanations of various deprecation warnings, please
221 =item Significant cleanups to core tests to ensure that language and
222 interpreter features are not used before they're tested.
224 =item F<t/porting/podcheck.t> automatically checks the well-formedness of
225 POD found in all .pl, .pm and .pod files in the F<MANIFEST>, other than in
226 dual-lifed modules which are primarily maintained outside the Perl core.
228 =item F<t/porting/manifest.t> now tests that all files listed in MANIFEST are present.
232 =head1 Known Problems
234 XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any
235 tests that had to be C<TODO>ed for the release would be noted here, unless
236 they were specific to a particular platform (see below).
238 This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
239 from either 5.10.1 or 5.11.0.
253 =item The Perl 5.11.0 release notes incorrectly described 'delete local'
257 =head1 Acknowledgements
259 XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
262 =head1 Reporting Bugs
264 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
265 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
266 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
267 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
269 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
270 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
271 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
272 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
273 analysed by the Perl porting team.
275 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
276 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
277 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
278 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
279 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
280 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
281 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
282 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
287 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
290 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
292 The F<README> file for general stuff.
294 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
298 This is all changes through 6609e0408cfa30e0d5c739e4c818f8591c88c0bc