This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Perl Buzz
by Andy Lester.
Original Post: Perl 5.12 released; Perl 5 under new release process
Feed Title: Perlbuzz
Feed URL: http://perlbuzz.com/atom.xml
Feed Description: What's happening in the world of Perl programming, including Perl 5, Perl 6, the CPAN and Parrot?
By Jesse Vincent, thanks to Shlomi Fish for the markup. Please note the section about the new time-based release process below.
'Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, for
she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak
first, 'why your cat grins like that?'
'It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess, 'and that's why.
Pig!'
She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice
quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed
to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on
again:--
'I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I
didn't know that cats COULD grin.'
'They all can,' said the Duchess; 'and most of 'em do.'
-- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland
On behalf of Perl's development team, It gives me great pleasure
to announce the release of Perl 5.12.0.
Perl 5.12.0 represents approximately two years of development
since version 5.10.0 and contains over 750,000 lines of changes
across over 3,000 files from over 200 authors and committers.
This release cycle marks a change to a time-based release
process. Beginning with version 5.11.0, we make a new development
release of Perl available on the 20th of each month. Each spring,
we will release a new stable version of Perl. One month later, we
will make a minor update to deal with any issues discovered after
the initial ".0" release. Future releases in the stable series will
follow quarterly. In contrast to releases of Perl, maintenance
releases will contain fixes for issues discovered after the .0
release, but will not include new features or behavior.
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 5.12.0 features numerous new features, optimizations and
bugfixes. You can find a complete list of these changes on the web
at:
As specified in the licenses for Perl (see the files named
Artistic or Copying in the Perl distribution), THIS PACKAGE IS
PROVIDED WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
Based on extensive testing over the past 3 months, we believe
that Perl 5.12.0 is ready for production deployments. However, you
should never blindly trust any software vendor. It is imperative
that you test new software before deploying it in production.
While we have worked tirelessly to ensure that Perl 5.12.0 will
be a solid platform for your software, it's possible that issues
will be found after release day. You can find a current list of
known issues with Perl 5.12.0 at http://dev.perl.org/perl5/errata.html
Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a
vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are
known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl
5.12.0:
This list is woefully incomplete as it's automatically generated
from version control history. In particular, it doesn't include the
names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported
issues in previous versions of Perl that helped make Perl 5.12.0
better. For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical
contributors, please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl 5.12.0
distribution.
Previous Topic
