| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perl589delta - what is new for perl v5.8.9 |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This document describes differences between the 5.8.8 release and |
| 8 | the 5.8.9 release. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | =head1 Notice |
| 11 | |
| 12 | The 5.8.9 release will be the last significant release of the 5.8.x |
| 13 | series. Any future releases of 5.8.x will likely only be to deal with |
| 14 | security issues, and platform build failures. Hence you should look to |
| 15 | migrating to 5.10.x, if you have not started already. |
| 16 | See L</"Known Problems"> for more information. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
| 19 | |
| 20 | A particular construction in the source code of extensions written in C++ |
| 21 | may need changing. See L</"Changed Internals"> for more details. All |
| 22 | extensions written in C, most written in C++, and all existing compiled |
| 23 | extensions are unaffected. This was necessary to improve C++ support. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | Other than this, there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.8.8. |
| 26 | If any exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
| 29 | |
| 30 | =head2 Unicode Character Database 5.1.0. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has |
| 33 | been updated to 5.1.0 from 4.1.0. See |
| 34 | L<http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#NotableChanges> for the |
| 35 | notable changes. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | =head2 stat and -X on directory handles |
| 38 | |
| 39 | It is now possible to call C<stat> and the C<-X> filestat operators on |
| 40 | directory handles. As both directory and file handles are barewords, there |
| 41 | can be ambiguities over which was intended. In these situations the file |
| 42 | handle semantics are preferred. Both also treat C<*FILE{IO}> filehandles |
| 43 | like C<*FILE> filehandles. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | =head2 Source filters in @INC |
| 46 | |
| 47 | It's possible to enhance the mechanism of subroutine hooks in @INC by |
| 48 | adding a source filter on top of the filehandle opened and returned by the |
| 49 | hook. This feature was planned a long time ago, but wasn't quite working |
| 50 | until now. See L<perlfunc/require> for details. (Nicholas Clark) |
| 51 | |
| 52 | =head2 Exceptions in constant folding |
| 53 | |
| 54 | The constant folding routine is now wrapped in an exception handler, and |
| 55 | if folding throws an exception (such as attempting to evaluate 0/0), perl |
| 56 | now retains the current optree, rather than aborting the whole program. |
| 57 | Without this change, programs would not compile if they had expressions that |
| 58 | happened to generate exceptions, even though those expressions were in code |
| 59 | that could never be reached at runtime. (Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell) |
| 60 | |
| 61 | =head2 C<no VERSION> |
| 62 | |
| 63 | You can now use C<no> followed by a version number to specify that you |
| 64 | want to use a version of perl older than the specified one. |
| 65 | |
| 66 | =head2 Improved internal UTF-8 caching code |
| 67 | |
| 68 | The code that caches calculated UTF-8 byte offsets for character offsets for |
| 69 | a string has been re-written. Several bugs have been located and eliminated, |
| 70 | and the code now makes better use of the information it has, so should be |
| 71 | faster. In particular, it doesn't scan to the end of a string before |
| 72 | calculating an offset within the string, which should speed up some operations |
| 73 | on long strings. It is now possible to disable the caching code at run time, |
| 74 | to verify that it is not the cause of suspected problems. |
| 75 | |
| 76 | =head2 Runtime relocatable installations |
| 77 | |
| 78 | There is now F<Configure> support for creating a perl tree that is relocatable |
| 79 | at run time. see L</Relocatable installations>. |
| 80 | |
| 81 | =head2 New internal variables |
| 82 | |
| 83 | =over 4 |
| 84 | |
| 85 | =item C<${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}> |
| 86 | |
| 87 | This variable gives the native status returned by the last pipe close, |
| 88 | backtick command, successful call to C<wait> or C<waitpid>, or from the |
| 89 | C<system> operator. See L<perlvar> for details. (Contributed by Gisle Aas.) |
| 90 | |
| 91 | =item C<${^UTF8CACHE}> |
| 92 | |
| 93 | This variable controls the state of the internal UTF-8 offset caching code. |
| 94 | 1 for on (the default), 0 for off, -1 to debug the caching code by checking |
| 95 | all its results against linear scans, and panicking on any discrepancy. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | =back |
| 98 | |
| 99 | =head2 C<readpipe> is now overridable |
| 100 | |
| 101 | The built-in function C<readpipe> is now overridable. Overriding it permits |
| 102 | also to override its operator counterpart, C<qx//> (also known as C<``>). |
| 103 | |
| 104 | =head2 simple exception handling macros |
| 105 | |
| 106 | Perl 5.8.9 (and 5.10.0 onwards) now provides a couple of macros to do very |
| 107 | basic exception handling in XS modules. You can use these macros if you call |
| 108 | code that may C<croak>, but you need to do some cleanup before giving control |
| 109 | back to Perl. See L<perlguts/Exception Handling> for more details. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | =head2 -D option enhancements |
| 112 | |
| 113 | =over |
| 114 | |
| 115 | =item * |
| 116 | |
| 117 | C<-Dq> suppresses the I<EXECUTING...> message when running under C<-D> |
| 118 | |
| 119 | =item * |
| 120 | |
| 121 | C<-Dl> logs runops loop entry and exit, and jump level popping. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | =item * |
| 124 | |
| 125 | C<-Dv> displays the process id as part of the trace output. |
| 126 | |
| 127 | =back |
| 128 | |
| 129 | =head2 XS-assisted SWASHGET |
| 130 | |
| 131 | Some pure-perl code that the regexp engine was using to retrieve Unicode |
| 132 | properties and transliteration mappings has been reimplemented in XS |
| 133 | for faster execution. |
| 134 | (SADAHIRO Tomoyuki) |
| 135 | |
| 136 | =head2 Constant subroutines |
| 137 | |
| 138 | The interpreter internals now support a far more memory efficient form of |
| 139 | inlineable constants. Storing a reference to a constant value in a symbol |
| 140 | table is equivalent to a full typeglob referencing a constant subroutine, |
| 141 | but using about 400 bytes less memory. This proxy constant subroutine is |
| 142 | automatically upgraded to a real typeglob with subroutine if necessary. |
| 143 | The approach taken is analogous to the existing space optimisation for |
| 144 | subroutine stub declarations, which are stored as plain scalars in place |
| 145 | of the full typeglob. |
| 146 | |
| 147 | However, to aid backwards compatibility of existing code, which (wrongly) |
| 148 | does not expect anything other than typeglobs in symbol tables, nothing in |
| 149 | core uses this feature, other than the regression tests. |
| 150 | |
| 151 | Stubs for prototyped subroutines have been stored in symbol tables as plain |
| 152 | strings, and stubs for unprototyped subroutines as the number -1, since 5.005, |
| 153 | so code which assumes that the core only places typeglobs in symbol tables |
| 154 | has been making incorrect assumptions for over 10 years. |
| 155 | |
| 156 | =head1 New Platforms |
| 157 | |
| 158 | Compile support added for: |
| 159 | |
| 160 | =over |
| 161 | |
| 162 | =item * |
| 163 | |
| 164 | DragonFlyBSD |
| 165 | |
| 166 | =item * |
| 167 | |
| 168 | MidnightBSD |
| 169 | |
| 170 | =item * |
| 171 | |
| 172 | MirOS BSD |
| 173 | |
| 174 | =item * |
| 175 | |
| 176 | RISC OS |
| 177 | |
| 178 | =item * |
| 179 | |
| 180 | Cray XT4/Catamount |
| 181 | |
| 182 | =back |
| 183 | |
| 184 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
| 185 | |
| 186 | =head2 New Modules |
| 187 | |
| 188 | =over |
| 189 | |
| 190 | =item * |
| 191 | |
| 192 | C<Module::Pluggable> is a simple framework to create modules that accept |
| 193 | pluggable sub-modules. The bundled version is 3.8 |
| 194 | |
| 195 | =item * |
| 196 | |
| 197 | C<Module::CoreList> is a hash of hashes that is keyed on perl version as |
| 198 | indicated in C<$]>. The bundled version is 2.17 |
| 199 | |
| 200 | =item * |
| 201 | |
| 202 | C<Win32API::File> now available in core on Microsoft Windows. The bundled |
| 203 | version is 0.1001_01 |
| 204 | |
| 205 | =item * |
| 206 | |
| 207 | C<Devel::InnerPackage> finds all the packages defined by a single file. It is |
| 208 | part of the C<Module::Pluggable> distribution. The bundled version is 0.3 |
| 209 | |
| 210 | =back |
| 211 | |
| 212 | =head2 Updated Modules |
| 213 | |
| 214 | =over |
| 215 | |
| 216 | =item * |
| 217 | |
| 218 | C<attributes> upgraded to version 0.09 |
| 219 | |
| 220 | =item * |
| 221 | |
| 222 | C<AutoLoader> upgraded to version 5.67 |
| 223 | |
| 224 | =item * |
| 225 | |
| 226 | C<AutoSplit> upgraded to 1.06 |
| 227 | |
| 228 | =item * |
| 229 | |
| 230 | C<autouse> upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 231 | |
| 232 | =item * |
| 233 | |
| 234 | C<B> upgraded from 1.09_01 to 1.19 |
| 235 | |
| 236 | =over |
| 237 | |
| 238 | =item * |
| 239 | |
| 240 | provides new pad related abstraction macros C<B::NV::COP_SEQ_RANGE_LOW>, |
| 241 | C<B::NV::COP_SEQ_RANGE_HIGH>, C<B::NV::PARENT_PAD_INDEX>, |
| 242 | C<B::NV::PARENT_FAKELEX_FLAGS>, which hides the difference in storage in |
| 243 | 5.10.0 and later. |
| 244 | |
| 245 | =item * |
| 246 | |
| 247 | provides C<B::sub_generation>, which exposes C<PL_sub_generation> |
| 248 | |
| 249 | =item * |
| 250 | |
| 251 | provides C<B::GV::isGV_with_GP>, which on pre-5.10 perls always returns true. |
| 252 | |
| 253 | =item * |
| 254 | |
| 255 | New type C<B::HE> added with methods C<VAL>, C<HASH> and C<SVKEY_force> |
| 256 | |
| 257 | =item * |
| 258 | |
| 259 | The C<B::GVf_IMPORTED_CV> flag is now set correctly when a proxy |
| 260 | constant subroutine is imported. |
| 261 | |
| 262 | =item * |
| 263 | |
| 264 | bugs fixed in the handling of C<PMOP>s. |
| 265 | |
| 266 | =item * |
| 267 | |
| 268 | C<B::BM::PREVIOUS> returns now C<U32>, not C<U16>. |
| 269 | C<B::CV::START> and C<B:CV::ROOT> return now C<NULL> on an XSUB, |
| 270 | C<B::CV::XSUB> and C<B::CV::XSUBANY> return 0 on a non-XSUB. |
| 271 | |
| 272 | =back |
| 273 | |
| 274 | =item * |
| 275 | |
| 276 | C<B::C> upgraded to 1.05 |
| 277 | |
| 278 | =item * |
| 279 | |
| 280 | C<B::Concise> upgraded to 0.76 |
| 281 | |
| 282 | =over |
| 283 | |
| 284 | =item * |
| 285 | |
| 286 | new option C<-src> causes the rendering of each statement (starting with |
| 287 | the nextstate OP) to be preceded by the first line of source code that |
| 288 | generates it. |
| 289 | |
| 290 | =item * |
| 291 | |
| 292 | new option C<-stash="somepackage">, C<require>s "somepackage", and then renders |
| 293 | each function defined in its namespace. |
| 294 | |
| 295 | =item * |
| 296 | |
| 297 | now has documentation of detailed hint symbols. |
| 298 | |
| 299 | =back |
| 300 | |
| 301 | =item * |
| 302 | |
| 303 | C<B::Debug> upgraded to version 1.05 |
| 304 | |
| 305 | =item * |
| 306 | |
| 307 | C<B::Deparse> upgraded to version 0.87 |
| 308 | |
| 309 | =over 4 |
| 310 | |
| 311 | =item * |
| 312 | |
| 313 | properly deparse C<print readpipe $x, $y>. |
| 314 | |
| 315 | =item * |
| 316 | |
| 317 | now handles C<''->()>, C<::()>, C<sub :: {}>, I<etc.> correctly [RT #43010]. |
| 318 | All bugs in parsing these kinds of syntax are now fixed: |
| 319 | |
| 320 | perl -MO=Deparse -e '"my %h = "->()' |
| 321 | perl -MO=Deparse -e '::->()' |
| 322 | perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub :: {}' |
| 323 | perl -MO=Deparse -e 'package a; sub a::b::c {}' |
| 324 | perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub the::main::road {}' |
| 325 | |
| 326 | =item * |
| 327 | |
| 328 | does B<not> deparse C<$^H{v_string}>, which is automatically set by the |
| 329 | internals. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | =back |
| 332 | |
| 333 | =item * |
| 334 | |
| 335 | C<B::Lint> upgraded to version 1.11 |
| 336 | |
| 337 | =item * |
| 338 | |
| 339 | C<B::Terse> upgraded to version 1.05 |
| 340 | |
| 341 | =item * |
| 342 | |
| 343 | C<base> upgraded to version 2.13 |
| 344 | |
| 345 | =over 4 |
| 346 | |
| 347 | =item * |
| 348 | |
| 349 | loading a module via base.pm would mask a global C<$SIG{__DIE__}> in that |
| 350 | module. |
| 351 | |
| 352 | =item * |
| 353 | |
| 354 | push all classes at once in C<@ISA> |
| 355 | |
| 356 | =back |
| 357 | |
| 358 | =item * |
| 359 | |
| 360 | C<Benchmark> upgraded to version 1.10 |
| 361 | |
| 362 | =item * |
| 363 | |
| 364 | C<bigint> upgraded to 0.23 |
| 365 | |
| 366 | =item * |
| 367 | |
| 368 | C<bignum> upgraded to 0.23 |
| 369 | |
| 370 | =item * |
| 371 | |
| 372 | C<bigrat> upgraded to 0.23 |
| 373 | |
| 374 | =item * |
| 375 | |
| 376 | C<blib> upgraded to 0.04 |
| 377 | |
| 378 | =item * |
| 379 | |
| 380 | C<Carp> upgraded to version 1.10 |
| 381 | |
| 382 | The argument backtrace code now shows C<undef> as C<undef>, |
| 383 | instead of a string I<"undef">. |
| 384 | |
| 385 | =item * |
| 386 | |
| 387 | C<CGI> upgraded to version 3.42 |
| 388 | |
| 389 | =item * |
| 390 | |
| 391 | C<charnames> upgraded to 1.06 |
| 392 | |
| 393 | =item * |
| 394 | |
| 395 | C<constant> upgraded to version 1.17 |
| 396 | |
| 397 | =item * |
| 398 | |
| 399 | C<CPAN> upgraded to version 1.9301 |
| 400 | |
| 401 | =item * |
| 402 | |
| 403 | C<Cwd> upgraded to version 3.29 with some platform specific |
| 404 | improvements (including for VMS). |
| 405 | |
| 406 | =item * |
| 407 | |
| 408 | C<Data::Dumper> upgraded to version 2.121_17 |
| 409 | |
| 410 | =over |
| 411 | |
| 412 | =item * |
| 413 | |
| 414 | Fixes hash iterator current position with the pure Perl version [RT #40668] |
| 415 | |
| 416 | =item * |
| 417 | |
| 418 | Performance enhancements, which will be most evident on platforms where |
| 419 | repeated calls to C's C<realloc()> are slow, such as Win32. |
| 420 | |
| 421 | =back |
| 422 | |
| 423 | =item * |
| 424 | |
| 425 | C<DB_File> upgraded to version 1.817 |
| 426 | |
| 427 | =item * |
| 428 | |
| 429 | C<DB_Filter> upgraded to version 0.02 |
| 430 | |
| 431 | =item * |
| 432 | |
| 433 | C<Devel::DProf> upgraded to version 20080331.00 |
| 434 | |
| 435 | =item * |
| 436 | |
| 437 | C<Devel::Peek> upgraded to version 1.04 |
| 438 | |
| 439 | =item * |
| 440 | |
| 441 | C<Devel::PPPort> upgraded to version 3.14 |
| 442 | |
| 443 | =item * |
| 444 | |
| 445 | C<diagnostics> upgraded to version 1.16 |
| 446 | |
| 447 | =item * |
| 448 | |
| 449 | C<Digest> upgraded to version 1.15 |
| 450 | |
| 451 | =item * |
| 452 | |
| 453 | C<Digest::MD5> upgraded to version 2.37 |
| 454 | |
| 455 | =item * |
| 456 | |
| 457 | C<DirHandle> upgraded to version 1.02 |
| 458 | |
| 459 | =over |
| 460 | |
| 461 | =item * |
| 462 | |
| 463 | now localises C<$.>, C<$@>, C<$!>, C<$^E>, and C<$?> before closing the |
| 464 | directory handle to suppress leaking any side effects of warnings about it |
| 465 | already being closed. |
| 466 | |
| 467 | =back |
| 468 | |
| 469 | =item * |
| 470 | |
| 471 | C<DynaLoader> upgraded to version 1.09 |
| 472 | |
| 473 | C<DynaLoader> can now dynamically load a loadable object from a file with a |
| 474 | non-default file extension. |
| 475 | |
| 476 | =item * |
| 477 | |
| 478 | C<Encode> upgraded to version 2.26 |
| 479 | |
| 480 | C<Encode::Alias> includes a fix for encoding "646" on Solaris (better known as |
| 481 | ASCII). |
| 482 | |
| 483 | =item * |
| 484 | |
| 485 | C<English> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 486 | |
| 487 | =item * |
| 488 | |
| 489 | C<Errno> upgraded to version 1.10 |
| 490 | |
| 491 | =item * |
| 492 | |
| 493 | C<Exporter> upgraded to version 5.63 |
| 494 | |
| 495 | =item * |
| 496 | |
| 497 | C<ExtUtils::Command> upgraded to version 1.15 |
| 498 | |
| 499 | =item * |
| 500 | |
| 501 | C<ExtUtils::Constant> upgraded to version 0.21 |
| 502 | |
| 503 | =item * |
| 504 | |
| 505 | C<ExtUtils::Embed> upgraded to version 1.28 |
| 506 | |
| 507 | =item * |
| 508 | |
| 509 | C<ExtUtils::Install> upgraded to version 1.50_01 |
| 510 | |
| 511 | =item * |
| 512 | |
| 513 | C<ExtUtils::Installed> upgraded to version 1.43 |
| 514 | |
| 515 | =item * |
| 516 | |
| 517 | C<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> upgraded to version 6.48 |
| 518 | |
| 519 | =over |
| 520 | |
| 521 | =item * |
| 522 | |
| 523 | support for C<INSTALLSITESCRIPT> and C<INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT> |
| 524 | configuration. |
| 525 | |
| 526 | =back |
| 527 | |
| 528 | =item * |
| 529 | |
| 530 | C<ExtUtils::Manifest> upgraded to version 1.55 |
| 531 | |
| 532 | =item * |
| 533 | |
| 534 | C<ExtUtils::ParseXS> upgraded to version 2.19 |
| 535 | |
| 536 | =item * |
| 537 | |
| 538 | C<Fatal> upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 539 | |
| 540 | =over |
| 541 | |
| 542 | =item * |
| 543 | |
| 544 | allows built-ins in C<CORE::GLOBAL> to be made fatal. |
| 545 | |
| 546 | =back |
| 547 | |
| 548 | =item * |
| 549 | |
| 550 | C<Fcntl> upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 551 | |
| 552 | =item * |
| 553 | |
| 554 | C<fields> upgraded to version 2.12 |
| 555 | |
| 556 | =item * |
| 557 | |
| 558 | C<File::Basename> upgraded to version 2.77 |
| 559 | |
| 560 | =item * |
| 561 | |
| 562 | C<FileCache> upgraded to version 1.07 |
| 563 | |
| 564 | =item * |
| 565 | |
| 566 | C<File::Compare> upgraded to 1.1005 |
| 567 | |
| 568 | =item * |
| 569 | |
| 570 | C<File::Copy> upgraded to 2.13 |
| 571 | |
| 572 | =over 4 |
| 573 | |
| 574 | =item * |
| 575 | |
| 576 | now uses 3-arg open. |
| 577 | |
| 578 | =back |
| 579 | |
| 580 | =item * |
| 581 | |
| 582 | C<File::DosGlob> upgraded to 1.01 |
| 583 | |
| 584 | =item * |
| 585 | |
| 586 | C<File::Find> upgraded to version 1.13 |
| 587 | |
| 588 | =item * |
| 589 | |
| 590 | C<File::Glob> upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 591 | |
| 592 | =over |
| 593 | |
| 594 | =item * |
| 595 | |
| 596 | fixes spurious results with brackets inside braces. |
| 597 | |
| 598 | =back |
| 599 | |
| 600 | =item * |
| 601 | |
| 602 | C<File::Path> upgraded to version 2.07_02 |
| 603 | |
| 604 | =item * |
| 605 | |
| 606 | C<File::Spec> upgraded to version 3.29 |
| 607 | |
| 608 | =over 4 |
| 609 | |
| 610 | =item * |
| 611 | |
| 612 | improved handling of bad arguments. |
| 613 | |
| 614 | =item * |
| 615 | |
| 616 | some platform specific improvements (including for VMS and Cygwin), with |
| 617 | an optimisation on C<abs2rel> when handling both relative arguments. |
| 618 | |
| 619 | =back |
| 620 | |
| 621 | =item * |
| 622 | |
| 623 | C<File::stat> upgraded to version 1.01 |
| 624 | |
| 625 | =item * |
| 626 | |
| 627 | C<File::Temp> upgraded to version 0.20 |
| 628 | |
| 629 | =item * |
| 630 | |
| 631 | C<filetest> upgraded to version 1.02 |
| 632 | |
| 633 | =item * |
| 634 | |
| 635 | C<Filter::Util::Call> upgraded to version 1.07 |
| 636 | |
| 637 | =item * |
| 638 | |
| 639 | C<Filter::Simple> upgraded to version 0.83 |
| 640 | |
| 641 | =item * |
| 642 | |
| 643 | C<FindBin> upgraded to version 1.49 |
| 644 | |
| 645 | =item * |
| 646 | |
| 647 | C<GDBM_File> upgraded to version 1.09 |
| 648 | |
| 649 | =item * |
| 650 | |
| 651 | C<Getopt::Long> upgraded to version 2.37 |
| 652 | |
| 653 | =item * |
| 654 | |
| 655 | C<Getopt::Std> upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 656 | |
| 657 | =item * |
| 658 | |
| 659 | C<Hash::Util> upgraded to version 0.06 |
| 660 | |
| 661 | =item * |
| 662 | |
| 663 | C<if> upgraded to version 0.05 |
| 664 | |
| 665 | =item * |
| 666 | |
| 667 | C<IO> upgraded to version 1.23 |
| 668 | |
| 669 | Reduced number of calls to C<getpeername> in C<IO::Socket> |
| 670 | |
| 671 | =item * |
| 672 | |
| 673 | C<IPC::Open> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 674 | |
| 675 | =item * |
| 676 | |
| 677 | C<IPC::Open3> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 678 | |
| 679 | =item * |
| 680 | |
| 681 | C<IPC::SysV> upgraded to version 2.00 |
| 682 | |
| 683 | =item * |
| 684 | |
| 685 | C<lib> upgraded to version 0.61 |
| 686 | |
| 687 | =over |
| 688 | |
| 689 | =item * |
| 690 | |
| 691 | avoid warning about loading F<.par> files. |
| 692 | |
| 693 | =back |
| 694 | |
| 695 | =item * |
| 696 | |
| 697 | C<libnet> upgraded to version 1.22 |
| 698 | |
| 699 | =item * |
| 700 | |
| 701 | C<List::Util> upgraded to 1.19 |
| 702 | |
| 703 | =item * |
| 704 | |
| 705 | C<Locale::Maketext> upgraded to 1.13 |
| 706 | |
| 707 | =item * |
| 708 | |
| 709 | C<Math::BigFloat> upgraded to version 1.60 |
| 710 | |
| 711 | =item * |
| 712 | |
| 713 | C<Math::BigInt> upgraded to version 1.89 |
| 714 | |
| 715 | =item * |
| 716 | |
| 717 | C<Math::BigRat> upgraded to version 0.22 |
| 718 | |
| 719 | =over 4 |
| 720 | |
| 721 | =item * |
| 722 | |
| 723 | implements new C<as_float> method. |
| 724 | |
| 725 | =back |
| 726 | |
| 727 | =item * |
| 728 | |
| 729 | C<Math::Complex> upgraded to version 1.54. |
| 730 | |
| 731 | =item * |
| 732 | |
| 733 | C<Math::Trig> upgraded to version 1.18. |
| 734 | |
| 735 | =item * |
| 736 | |
| 737 | C<NDBM_File> upgraded to version 1.07 |
| 738 | |
| 739 | =over |
| 740 | |
| 741 | =item * |
| 742 | |
| 743 | improve F<g++> handling for systems using GDBM compatibility headers. |
| 744 | |
| 745 | =back |
| 746 | |
| 747 | =item * |
| 748 | |
| 749 | C<Net::Ping> upgraded to version 2.35 |
| 750 | |
| 751 | =item * |
| 752 | |
| 753 | C<NEXT> upgraded to version 0.61 |
| 754 | |
| 755 | =over |
| 756 | |
| 757 | =item * |
| 758 | |
| 759 | fix several bugs with C<NEXT> when working with C<AUTOLOAD>, C<eval> block, and |
| 760 | within overloaded stringification. |
| 761 | |
| 762 | =back |
| 763 | |
| 764 | =item * |
| 765 | |
| 766 | C<ODBM_File> upgraded to 1.07 |
| 767 | |
| 768 | =item * |
| 769 | |
| 770 | C<open> upgraded to 1.06 |
| 771 | |
| 772 | =item * |
| 773 | |
| 774 | C<ops> upgraded to 1.02 |
| 775 | |
| 776 | =item * |
| 777 | |
| 778 | C<PerlIO::encoding> upgraded to version 0.11 |
| 779 | |
| 780 | =item * |
| 781 | |
| 782 | C<PerlIO::scalar> upgraded to version 0.06 |
| 783 | |
| 784 | =over 4 |
| 785 | |
| 786 | =item * |
| 787 | |
| 788 | [RT #40267] C<PerlIO::scalar> doesn't respect readonly-ness. |
| 789 | |
| 790 | =back |
| 791 | |
| 792 | =item * |
| 793 | |
| 794 | C<PerlIO::via> upgraded to version 0.05 |
| 795 | |
| 796 | =item * |
| 797 | |
| 798 | C<Pod::Html> upgraded to version 1.09 |
| 799 | |
| 800 | =item * |
| 801 | |
| 802 | C<Pod::Parser> upgraded to version 1.35 |
| 803 | |
| 804 | =item * |
| 805 | |
| 806 | C<Pod::Usage> upgraded to version 1.35 |
| 807 | |
| 808 | =item * |
| 809 | |
| 810 | C<POSIX> upgraded to version 1.15 |
| 811 | |
| 812 | =over |
| 813 | |
| 814 | =item * |
| 815 | |
| 816 | C<POSIX> constants that duplicate those in C<Fcntl> are now imported from |
| 817 | C<Fcntl> and re-exported, rather than being duplicated by C<POSIX> |
| 818 | |
| 819 | =item * |
| 820 | |
| 821 | C<POSIX::remove> can remove empty directories. |
| 822 | |
| 823 | =item * |
| 824 | |
| 825 | C<POSIX::setlocale> safer to call multiple times. |
| 826 | |
| 827 | =item * |
| 828 | |
| 829 | C<POSIX::SigRt> added, which provides access to POSIX realtime signal |
| 830 | functionality on systems that support it. |
| 831 | |
| 832 | =back |
| 833 | |
| 834 | =item * |
| 835 | |
| 836 | C<re> upgraded to version 0.06_01 |
| 837 | |
| 838 | =item * |
| 839 | |
| 840 | C<Safe> upgraded to version 2.16 |
| 841 | |
| 842 | =item * |
| 843 | |
| 844 | C<Scalar::Util> upgraded to 1.19 |
| 845 | |
| 846 | =item * |
| 847 | |
| 848 | C<SDBM_File> upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 849 | |
| 850 | =item * |
| 851 | |
| 852 | C<SelfLoader> upgraded to version 1.17 |
| 853 | |
| 854 | =item * |
| 855 | |
| 856 | C<Shell> upgraded to version 0.72 |
| 857 | |
| 858 | =item * |
| 859 | |
| 860 | C<sigtrap> upgraded to version 1.04 |
| 861 | |
| 862 | =item * |
| 863 | |
| 864 | C<Socket> upgraded to version 1.81 |
| 865 | |
| 866 | =over |
| 867 | |
| 868 | =item * |
| 869 | |
| 870 | this fixes an optimistic use of C<gethostbyname> |
| 871 | |
| 872 | =back |
| 873 | |
| 874 | =item * |
| 875 | |
| 876 | C<Storable> upgraded to 2.19 |
| 877 | |
| 878 | =item * |
| 879 | |
| 880 | C<Switch> upgraded to version 2.13 |
| 881 | |
| 882 | =item * |
| 883 | |
| 884 | C<Sys::Syslog> upgraded to version 0.27 |
| 885 | |
| 886 | =item * |
| 887 | |
| 888 | C<Term::ANSIColor> upgraded to version 1.12 |
| 889 | |
| 890 | =item * |
| 891 | |
| 892 | C<Term::Cap> upgraded to version 1.12 |
| 893 | |
| 894 | =item * |
| 895 | |
| 896 | C<Term::ReadLine> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 897 | |
| 898 | =item * |
| 899 | |
| 900 | C<Test::Builder> upgraded to version 0.80 |
| 901 | |
| 902 | =item * |
| 903 | |
| 904 | C<Test::Harness> upgraded version to 2.64 |
| 905 | |
| 906 | =over |
| 907 | |
| 908 | =item * |
| 909 | |
| 910 | this makes it able to handle newlines. |
| 911 | |
| 912 | =back |
| 913 | |
| 914 | =item * |
| 915 | |
| 916 | C<Test::More> upgraded to version 0.80 |
| 917 | |
| 918 | =item * |
| 919 | |
| 920 | C<Test::Simple> upgraded to version 0.80 |
| 921 | |
| 922 | =item * |
| 923 | |
| 924 | C<Text::Balanced> upgraded to version 1.98 |
| 925 | |
| 926 | =item * |
| 927 | |
| 928 | C<Text::ParseWords> upgraded to version 3.27 |
| 929 | |
| 930 | =item * |
| 931 | |
| 932 | C<Text::Soundex> upgraded to version 3.03 |
| 933 | |
| 934 | =item * |
| 935 | |
| 936 | C<Text::Tabs> upgraded to version 2007.1117 |
| 937 | |
| 938 | =item * |
| 939 | |
| 940 | C<Text::Wrap> upgraded to version 2006.1117 |
| 941 | |
| 942 | =item * |
| 943 | |
| 944 | C<Thread> upgraded to version 2.01 |
| 945 | |
| 946 | =item * |
| 947 | |
| 948 | C<Thread::Semaphore> upgraded to version 2.09 |
| 949 | |
| 950 | =item * |
| 951 | |
| 952 | C<Thread::Queue> upgraded to version 2.11 |
| 953 | |
| 954 | =over |
| 955 | |
| 956 | =item * |
| 957 | |
| 958 | added capability to add complex structures (e.g., hash of hashes) to queues. |
| 959 | |
| 960 | =item * |
| 961 | |
| 962 | added capability to dequeue multiple items at once. |
| 963 | |
| 964 | =item * |
| 965 | |
| 966 | added new methods to inspect and manipulate queues: C<peek>, C<insert> and |
| 967 | C<extract> |
| 968 | |
| 969 | =back |
| 970 | |
| 971 | =item * |
| 972 | |
| 973 | C<Tie::Handle> upgraded to version 4.2 |
| 974 | |
| 975 | =item * |
| 976 | |
| 977 | C<Tie::Hash> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 978 | |
| 979 | =item * |
| 980 | |
| 981 | C<Tie::Memoize> upgraded to version 1.1 |
| 982 | |
| 983 | =over |
| 984 | |
| 985 | =item * |
| 986 | |
| 987 | C<Tie::Memoize::EXISTS> now correctly caches its results. |
| 988 | |
| 989 | =back |
| 990 | |
| 991 | =item * |
| 992 | |
| 993 | C<Tie::RefHash> upgraded to version 1.38 |
| 994 | |
| 995 | =item * |
| 996 | |
| 997 | C<Tie::Scalar> upgraded to version 1.01 |
| 998 | |
| 999 | =item * |
| 1000 | |
| 1001 | C<Tie::StdHandle> upgraded to version 4.2 |
| 1002 | |
| 1003 | =item * |
| 1004 | |
| 1005 | C<Time::gmtime> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 1006 | |
| 1007 | =item * |
| 1008 | |
| 1009 | C<Time::Local> upgraded to version 1.1901 |
| 1010 | |
| 1011 | =item * |
| 1012 | |
| 1013 | C<Time::HiRes> upgraded to version 1.9715 with various build improvements |
| 1014 | (including VMS) and minor platform-specific bug fixes (including |
| 1015 | for HP-UX 11 ia64). |
| 1016 | |
| 1017 | =item * |
| 1018 | |
| 1019 | C<threads> upgraded to 1.71 |
| 1020 | |
| 1021 | =over |
| 1022 | |
| 1023 | =item * |
| 1024 | |
| 1025 | new thread state information methods: C<is_running>, C<is_detached> |
| 1026 | and C<is_joinable>. C<list> method enhanced to return running or joinable |
| 1027 | threads. |
| 1028 | |
| 1029 | =item * |
| 1030 | |
| 1031 | new thread signal method: C<kill> |
| 1032 | |
| 1033 | =item * |
| 1034 | |
| 1035 | added capability to specify thread stack size. |
| 1036 | |
| 1037 | =item * |
| 1038 | |
| 1039 | added capability to control thread exiting behavior. Added a new C<exit> |
| 1040 | method. |
| 1041 | |
| 1042 | =back |
| 1043 | |
| 1044 | =item * |
| 1045 | |
| 1046 | C<threads::shared> upgraded to version 1.27 |
| 1047 | |
| 1048 | =over |
| 1049 | |
| 1050 | =item * |
| 1051 | |
| 1052 | smaller and faster implementation that eliminates one internal structure and |
| 1053 | the consequent level of indirection. |
| 1054 | |
| 1055 | =item * |
| 1056 | |
| 1057 | user locks are now stored in a safer manner. |
| 1058 | |
| 1059 | =item * |
| 1060 | |
| 1061 | new function C<shared_clone> creates a copy of an object leaving |
| 1062 | shared elements as-is and deep-cloning non-shared elements. |
| 1063 | |
| 1064 | =item * |
| 1065 | |
| 1066 | added new C<is_shared> method. |
| 1067 | |
| 1068 | =back |
| 1069 | |
| 1070 | =item * |
| 1071 | |
| 1072 | C<Unicode::Normalize> upgraded to version 1.02 |
| 1073 | |
| 1074 | =item * |
| 1075 | |
| 1076 | C<Unicode::UCD> upgraded to version 0.25 |
| 1077 | |
| 1078 | =item * |
| 1079 | |
| 1080 | C<warnings> upgraded to version 1.05_01 |
| 1081 | |
| 1082 | =item * |
| 1083 | |
| 1084 | C<Win32> upgraded to version 0.38 |
| 1085 | |
| 1086 | =over 4 |
| 1087 | |
| 1088 | =item * |
| 1089 | |
| 1090 | added new function C<GetCurrentProcessId> which returns the regular Windows |
| 1091 | process identifier of the current process, even when called from within a fork. |
| 1092 | |
| 1093 | =back |
| 1094 | |
| 1095 | =item * |
| 1096 | |
| 1097 | C<XSLoader> upgraded to version 0.10 |
| 1098 | |
| 1099 | =item * |
| 1100 | |
| 1101 | C<XS::APItest> and C<XS::Typemap> are for internal use only and hence |
| 1102 | no longer installed. Many more tests have been added to C<XS::APItest>. |
| 1103 | |
| 1104 | =back |
| 1105 | |
| 1106 | =head1 Utility Changes |
| 1107 | |
| 1108 | =head2 debugger upgraded to version 1.31 |
| 1109 | |
| 1110 | =over 4 |
| 1111 | |
| 1112 | =item * |
| 1113 | |
| 1114 | Andreas KE<ouml>nig contributed two functions to save and load the debugger |
| 1115 | history. |
| 1116 | |
| 1117 | =item * |
| 1118 | |
| 1119 | C<NEXT::AUTOLOAD> no longer emits warnings under the debugger. |
| 1120 | |
| 1121 | =item * |
| 1122 | |
| 1123 | The debugger should now correctly find tty the device on OS X 10.5 and VMS |
| 1124 | when the program C<fork>s. |
| 1125 | |
| 1126 | =item * |
| 1127 | |
| 1128 | LVALUE subs now work inside the debugger. |
| 1129 | |
| 1130 | =back |
| 1131 | |
| 1132 | =head2 F<perlthanks> |
| 1133 | |
| 1134 | Perl 5.8.9 adds a new utility F<perlthanks>, which is a variant of F<perlbug>, |
| 1135 | but for sending non-bug-reports to the authors and maintainers of Perl. |
| 1136 | Getting nothing but bug reports can become a bit demoralising - we'll see if |
| 1137 | this changes things. |
| 1138 | |
| 1139 | =head2 F<perlbug> |
| 1140 | |
| 1141 | F<perlbug> now checks if you're reporting about a non-core module and suggests |
| 1142 | you report it to the CPAN author instead. |
| 1143 | |
| 1144 | =head2 F<h2xs> |
| 1145 | |
| 1146 | =over |
| 1147 | |
| 1148 | =item * |
| 1149 | |
| 1150 | won't define an empty string as a constant [RT #25366] |
| 1151 | |
| 1152 | =item * |
| 1153 | |
| 1154 | has examples for C<h2xs -X> |
| 1155 | |
| 1156 | =back |
| 1157 | |
| 1158 | =head2 F<h2ph> |
| 1159 | |
| 1160 | =over 4 |
| 1161 | |
| 1162 | =item * |
| 1163 | |
| 1164 | now attempts to deal sensibly with the difference in path implications |
| 1165 | between C<""> and C<< E<lt>E<gt> >> quoting in C<#include> statements. |
| 1166 | |
| 1167 | =item * |
| 1168 | |
| 1169 | now generates correct code for C<#if defined A || defined B> |
| 1170 | [RT #39130] |
| 1171 | |
| 1172 | =back |
| 1173 | |
| 1174 | =head1 New Documentation |
| 1175 | |
| 1176 | As usual, the documentation received its share of corrections, clarifications |
| 1177 | and other nitfixes. More C<< X<...> >> tags were added for indexing. |
| 1178 | |
| 1179 | L<perlunitut> is a tutorial written by Juerd Waalboer on Unicode-related |
| 1180 | terminology and how to correctly handle Unicode in Perl scripts. |
| 1181 | |
| 1182 | L<perlunicode> is updated in section user defined properties. |
| 1183 | |
| 1184 | L<perluniintro> has been updated in the example of detecting data that is not |
| 1185 | valid in particular encoding. |
| 1186 | |
| 1187 | L<perlcommunity> provides an overview of the Perl Community along with further |
| 1188 | resources. |
| 1189 | |
| 1190 | L<CORE> documents the pseudo-namespace for Perl's core routines. |
| 1191 | |
| 1192 | =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation |
| 1193 | |
| 1194 | L<perlglossary> adds I<deprecated modules and features> and I<to be dropped modules>. |
| 1195 | |
| 1196 | L<perlhack> has been updated and added resources on smoke testing. |
| 1197 | |
| 1198 | The Perl FAQs (F<perlfaq1>..F<perlfaq9>) have been updated. |
| 1199 | |
| 1200 | L<perlcheat> is updated with better details on C<\w>, C<\d>, and C<\s>. |
| 1201 | |
| 1202 | L<perldebug> is updated with information on how to call the debugger. |
| 1203 | |
| 1204 | L<perldiag> documentation updated with I<subroutine with an ampersand> on the |
| 1205 | argument to C<exists> and C<delete> and also several terminology updates on |
| 1206 | warnings. |
| 1207 | |
| 1208 | L<perlfork> documents the limitation of C<exec> inside pseudo-processes. |
| 1209 | |
| 1210 | L<perlfunc>: |
| 1211 | |
| 1212 | =over |
| 1213 | |
| 1214 | =item * |
| 1215 | |
| 1216 | Documentation is fixed in section C<caller> and C<pop>. |
| 1217 | |
| 1218 | =item * |
| 1219 | |
| 1220 | Function C<alarm> now mentions C<Time::HiRes::ualarm> in preference |
| 1221 | to C<select>. |
| 1222 | |
| 1223 | =item * |
| 1224 | |
| 1225 | Regarding precedence in C<-X>, filetest operators are the same as unary |
| 1226 | operators, but not regarding parsing and parentheses (spotted by Eirik Berg |
| 1227 | Hanssen). |
| 1228 | |
| 1229 | =item * |
| 1230 | |
| 1231 | C<reverse> function documentation received scalar context examples. |
| 1232 | |
| 1233 | =back |
| 1234 | |
| 1235 | L<perllocale> documentation is adjusted for number localization and |
| 1236 | C<POSIX::setlocale> to fix Debian bug #379463. |
| 1237 | |
| 1238 | L<perlmodlib> is updated with C<CPAN::API::HOWTO> and |
| 1239 | C<Sys::Syslog::win32::Win32> |
| 1240 | |
| 1241 | L<perlre> documentation updated to reflect the differences between |
| 1242 | C<[[:xxxxx:]]> and C<\p{IsXxxxx}> matches. Also added section on C</g> and |
| 1243 | C</c> modifiers. |
| 1244 | |
| 1245 | L<perlreguts> describe the internals of the regular expressions engine. It has |
| 1246 | been contributed by Yves Orton. |
| 1247 | |
| 1248 | L<perlrebackslash> describes all perl regular expression backslash and escape |
| 1249 | sequences. |
| 1250 | |
| 1251 | L<perlrecharclass> describes the syntax and use of character classes in |
| 1252 | Perl Regular Expressions. |
| 1253 | |
| 1254 | L<perlrun> is updated to clarify on the hash seed I<PERL_HASH_SEED>. Also more |
| 1255 | information in options C<-x> and C<-u>. |
| 1256 | |
| 1257 | L<perlsub> example is updated to use a lexical variable for C<opendir> syntax. |
| 1258 | |
| 1259 | L<perlvar> fixes confusion about real GID C<$(> and effective GID C<$)>. |
| 1260 | |
| 1261 | Perl thread tutorial example is fixed in section |
| 1262 | L<perlthrtut/Queues: Passing Data Around> and L<perlthrtut>. |
| 1263 | |
| 1264 | L<perlhack> documentation extensively improved by Jarkko Hietaniemi and others. |
| 1265 | |
| 1266 | L<perltoot> provides information on modifying C<@UNIVERSAL::ISA>. |
| 1267 | |
| 1268 | L<perlport> documentation extended to include different C<kill(-9, ...)> |
| 1269 | semantics on Windows. It also clearly states C<dump> is not supported on Win32 |
| 1270 | and cygwin. |
| 1271 | |
| 1272 | F<INSTALL> has been updated and modernised. |
| 1273 | |
| 1274 | =head1 Performance Enhancements |
| 1275 | |
| 1276 | =over |
| 1277 | |
| 1278 | =item * |
| 1279 | |
| 1280 | The default since perl 5.000 has been for perl to create an empty scalar |
| 1281 | with every new typeglob. The increased use of lexical variables means that |
| 1282 | most are now unused. Thanks to Nicholas Clark's efforts, Perl can now be |
| 1283 | compiled with C<-DPERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV> to avoid creating these empty scalars. |
| 1284 | This will significantly decrease the number of scalars allocated for all |
| 1285 | configurations, and the number of scalars that need to be copied for ithread |
| 1286 | creation. Whilst this option is binary compatible with existing perl |
| 1287 | installations, it does change a long-standing assumption about the |
| 1288 | internals, hence it is not enabled by default, as some third party code may |
| 1289 | rely on the old behaviour. |
| 1290 | |
| 1291 | We would recommend testing with this configuration on new deployments of |
| 1292 | perl, particularly for multi-threaded servers, to see whether all third party |
| 1293 | code is compatible with it, as this configuration may give useful performance |
| 1294 | improvements. For existing installations we would not recommend changing to |
| 1295 | this configuration unless thorough testing is performed before deployment. |
| 1296 | |
| 1297 | =item * |
| 1298 | |
| 1299 | C<diagnostics> no longer uses C<$&>, which results in large speedups |
| 1300 | for regexp matching in all code using it. |
| 1301 | |
| 1302 | =item * |
| 1303 | |
| 1304 | Regular expressions classes of a single character are now treated the same as |
| 1305 | if the character had been used as a literal, meaning that code that uses |
| 1306 | char-classes as an escaping mechanism will see a speedup. (Yves Orton) |
| 1307 | |
| 1308 | =item * |
| 1309 | |
| 1310 | Creating anonymous array and hash references (ie. C<[]> and C<{}>) now incurs |
| 1311 | no more overhead than creating an anonymous list or hash. Nicholas Clark |
| 1312 | provided changes with a saving of two ops and one stack push, which was measured |
| 1313 | as a slightly better than 5% improvement for these operations. |
| 1314 | |
| 1315 | =item * |
| 1316 | |
| 1317 | Many calls to C<strlen()> have been eliminated, either because the length was |
| 1318 | already known, or by adopting or enhancing APIs that pass lengths. This has |
| 1319 | been aided by the adoption of a C<my_sprintf()> wrapper, which returns the |
| 1320 | correct C89 value - the length of the formatted string. Previously we could |
| 1321 | not rely on the return value of C<sprintf()>, because on some ancient but |
| 1322 | extant platforms it still returns C<char *>. |
| 1323 | |
| 1324 | =item * |
| 1325 | |
| 1326 | C<index> is now faster if the search string is stored in UTF-8 but only contains |
| 1327 | characters in the Latin-1 range. |
| 1328 | |
| 1329 | =item * |
| 1330 | |
| 1331 | The Unicode swatch cache inside the regexp engine is now used. (the lookup had |
| 1332 | a key mismatch, present since the initial implementation). [RT #42839] |
| 1333 | |
| 1334 | =back |
| 1335 | |
| 1336 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements |
| 1337 | |
| 1338 | =head2 Relocatable installations |
| 1339 | |
| 1340 | There is now F<Configure> support for creating a relocatable perl tree. If |
| 1341 | you F<Configure> with C<-Duserelocatableinc>, then the paths in C<@INC> (and |
| 1342 | everything else in C<%Config>) can be optionally located via the path of the |
| 1343 | F<perl> executable. |
| 1344 | |
| 1345 | At start time, if any paths in C<@INC> or C<Config> that F<Configure> marked |
| 1346 | as relocatable (by starting them with C<".../">), then they are prefixed the |
| 1347 | directory of C<$^X>. This allows the relocation can be configured on a |
| 1348 | per-directory basis, although the default with C<-Duserelocatableinc> is that |
| 1349 | everything is relocated. The initial install is done to the original configured |
| 1350 | prefix. |
| 1351 | |
| 1352 | =head2 Configuration improvements |
| 1353 | |
| 1354 | F<Configure> is now better at removing temporary files. Tom Callaway |
| 1355 | (from RedHat) also contributed patches that complete the set of flags |
| 1356 | passed to the compiler and the linker, in particular that C<-fPIC> is now |
| 1357 | enabled on Linux. It will also croak when your F</dev/null> isn't a device. |
| 1358 | |
| 1359 | A new configuration variable C<d_pseudofork> has been to F<Configure>, and is |
| 1360 | available as C<$Config{d_pseudofork}> in the C<Config> module. This |
| 1361 | distinguishes real C<fork> support from the pseudofork emulation used on |
| 1362 | Windows platforms. |
| 1363 | |
| 1364 | F<Config.pod> and F<config.sh> are now placed correctly for cross-compilation. |
| 1365 | |
| 1366 | C<$Config{useshrplib}> is now 'true' rather than 'yes' when using a shared perl |
| 1367 | library. |
| 1368 | |
| 1369 | =head2 Compilation improvements |
| 1370 | |
| 1371 | Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be problems |
| 1372 | if C<make test> is instructed to run in parallel. |
| 1373 | |
| 1374 | Many compilation warnings have been cleaned up. A very stubborn compiler |
| 1375 | warning in C<S_emulate_eaccess()> was killed after six attempts. |
| 1376 | F<g++> support has been tuned, especially for FreeBSD. |
| 1377 | |
| 1378 | F<mkppport> has been integrated, and all F<ppport.h> files in the core will now |
| 1379 | be autogenerated at build time (and removed during cleanup). |
| 1380 | |
| 1381 | =head2 Installation improvements. |
| 1382 | |
| 1383 | F<installman> now works with C<-Duserelocatableinc> and C<DESTDIR>. |
| 1384 | |
| 1385 | F<installperl> no longer installs: |
| 1386 | |
| 1387 | =over 4 |
| 1388 | |
| 1389 | =item * |
| 1390 | |
| 1391 | static library files of statically linked extensions when a shared perl library |
| 1392 | is being used. (They are not needed. See L</Windows> below). |
| 1393 | |
| 1394 | =item * |
| 1395 | |
| 1396 | F<SIGNATURE> and F<PAUSE*.pub> (CPAN files) |
| 1397 | |
| 1398 | =item * |
| 1399 | |
| 1400 | F<NOTES> and F<PATCHING> (ExtUtils files) |
| 1401 | |
| 1402 | =item * |
| 1403 | |
| 1404 | F<perlld> and F<ld2> (Cygwin files) |
| 1405 | |
| 1406 | =back |
| 1407 | |
| 1408 | =head2 Platform Specific Changes |
| 1409 | |
| 1410 | There are improved hints for AIX, Cygwin, DEC/OSF, FreeBSD, HP/UX, Irix 6 |
| 1411 | Linux, MachTen, NetBSD, OS/390, QNX, SCO, Solaris, SunOS, System V Release 5.x |
| 1412 | (UnixWare 7, OpenUNIX 8), Ultrix, UMIPS, uts and VOS. |
| 1413 | |
| 1414 | =head3 FreeBSD |
| 1415 | |
| 1416 | =over 4 |
| 1417 | |
| 1418 | =item * |
| 1419 | |
| 1420 | Drop C<-std=c89> and C<-ansi> if using C<long long> as the main integral type, |
| 1421 | else in FreeBSD 6.2 (and perhaps other releases), system headers do not |
| 1422 | declare some functions required by perl. |
| 1423 | |
| 1424 | =back |
| 1425 | |
| 1426 | =head3 Solaris |
| 1427 | |
| 1428 | =over 4 |
| 1429 | |
| 1430 | =item * |
| 1431 | |
| 1432 | Starting with Solaris 10, we do not want versioned shared libraries, because |
| 1433 | those often indicate a private use only library. These problems could often |
| 1434 | be triggered when L<SUNWbdb> (Berkeley DB) was installed. Hence if Solaris 10 |
| 1435 | is detected set C<ignore_versioned_solibs=y>. |
| 1436 | |
| 1437 | =back |
| 1438 | |
| 1439 | =head3 VMS |
| 1440 | |
| 1441 | =over 4 |
| 1442 | |
| 1443 | =item * |
| 1444 | |
| 1445 | Allow IEEE math to be deselected on OpenVMS I64 (but it remains the default). |
| 1446 | |
| 1447 | =item * |
| 1448 | |
| 1449 | Record IEEE usage in C<config.h> |
| 1450 | |
| 1451 | =item * |
| 1452 | |
| 1453 | Help older VMS compilers by using C<ccflags> when building C<munchconfig.exe>. |
| 1454 | |
| 1455 | =item * |
| 1456 | |
| 1457 | Don't try to build old C<Thread> extension on VMS when C<-Duseithreads> has |
| 1458 | been chosen. |
| 1459 | |
| 1460 | =item * |
| 1461 | |
| 1462 | Passing a raw string of "NaN" to F<nawk> causes a core dump - so the string |
| 1463 | has been changed to "*NaN*" |
| 1464 | |
| 1465 | =item * |
| 1466 | |
| 1467 | F<t/op/stat.t> tests will now test hard links on VMS if they are supported. |
| 1468 | |
| 1469 | =back |
| 1470 | |
| 1471 | =head3 Windows |
| 1472 | |
| 1473 | =over 4 |
| 1474 | |
| 1475 | =item * |
| 1476 | |
| 1477 | When using a shared perl library F<installperl> no longer installs static |
| 1478 | library files, import library files and export library files (of statically |
| 1479 | linked extensions) and empty bootstrap files (of dynamically linked |
| 1480 | extensions). This fixes a problem building PAR-Packer on Win32 with a debug |
| 1481 | build of perl. |
| 1482 | |
| 1483 | =item * |
| 1484 | |
| 1485 | Various improvements to the win32 build process, including support for Visual |
| 1486 | C++ 2005 Express Edition (aka Visual C++ 8.x). |
| 1487 | |
| 1488 | =item * |
| 1489 | |
| 1490 | F<perl.exe> will now have an icon if built with MinGW or Borland. |
| 1491 | |
| 1492 | =item * |
| 1493 | |
| 1494 | Improvements to the perl-static.exe build process. |
| 1495 | |
| 1496 | =item * |
| 1497 | |
| 1498 | Add Win32 makefile option to link all extensions statically. |
| 1499 | |
| 1500 | =item * |
| 1501 | |
| 1502 | The F<WinCE> directory has been merged into the F<Win32> directory. |
| 1503 | |
| 1504 | =item * |
| 1505 | |
| 1506 | C<setlocale> tests have been re-enabled for Windows XP onwards. |
| 1507 | |
| 1508 | =back |
| 1509 | |
| 1510 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
| 1511 | |
| 1512 | =head2 Unicode |
| 1513 | |
| 1514 | Many many bugs related to the internal Unicode implementation (UTF-8) have |
| 1515 | been fixed. In particular, long standing bugs related to returning Unicode |
| 1516 | via C<tie>, overloading or C<$@> are now gone, some of which were never |
| 1517 | reported. |
| 1518 | |
| 1519 | C<unpack> will internally convert the string back from UTF-8 on numeric types. |
| 1520 | This is a compromise between the full consistency now in 5.10, and the current |
| 1521 | behaviour, which is often used as a "feature" on string types. |
| 1522 | |
| 1523 | Using C<:crlf> and C<UTF-16> IO layers together will now work. |
| 1524 | |
| 1525 | Fixed problems with C<split>, Unicode C</\s+/> and C</ \0/>. |
| 1526 | |
| 1527 | Fixed bug RT #40641 - encoding of Unicode characters in regular expressions. |
| 1528 | |
| 1529 | Fixed a bug where using certain patterns in a regexp led to a panic. |
| 1530 | [RT #45337] |
| 1531 | |
| 1532 | Perl no longer segfaults (due to infinite internal recursion) if the locale's |
| 1533 | character is not UTF-8 [RT #41442]: |
| 1534 | |
| 1535 | use open ':locale'; |
| 1536 | print STDERR "\x{201e}"; # „ |
| 1537 | |
| 1538 | =head2 PerlIO |
| 1539 | |
| 1540 | Inconsistencies have been fixed in the reference counting PerlIO uses to keep |
| 1541 | track of Unix file descriptors, and the API used by XS code to manage getting |
| 1542 | and releasing C<FILE *>s |
| 1543 | |
| 1544 | =head2 Magic |
| 1545 | |
| 1546 | Several bugs have been fixed in Magic, the internal system used to implement |
| 1547 | features such as C<tie>, tainting and threads sharing. |
| 1548 | |
| 1549 | C<undef @array> on a tied array now correctly calls the C<CLEAR> method. |
| 1550 | |
| 1551 | Some of the bitwise ops were not checking whether their arguments were magical |
| 1552 | before using them. [RT #24816] |
| 1553 | |
| 1554 | Magic is no longer invoked twice by the expression C<\&$x> |
| 1555 | |
| 1556 | A bug with assigning large numbers and tainting has been resolved. |
| 1557 | [RT #40708] |
| 1558 | |
| 1559 | A new entry has been added to the MAGIC vtable - C<svt_local>. This is used |
| 1560 | when copying magic to the new value during C<local>, allowing certain problems |
| 1561 | with localising shared variables to be resolved. |
| 1562 | |
| 1563 | For the implementation details, see L<perlguts/Magic Virtual Tables>. |
| 1564 | |
| 1565 | =head2 Reblessing overloaded objects now works |
| 1566 | |
| 1567 | Internally, perl object-ness is on the referent, not the reference, even |
| 1568 | though methods can only be called via a reference. However, the original |
| 1569 | implementation of overloading stored flags related to overloading on the |
| 1570 | reference, relying on the flags being copied when the reference was copied, |
| 1571 | or set at the creation of a new reference. This manifests in a bug - if you |
| 1572 | rebless an object from a class that has overloading, into one that does not, |
| 1573 | then any other existing references think that they (still) point to an |
| 1574 | overloaded object, choose these C code paths, and then throw errors. |
| 1575 | Analogously, blessing into an overloaded class when other references exist will |
| 1576 | result in them not using overloading. |
| 1577 | |
| 1578 | The implementation has been fixed for 5.10, but this fix changes the semantics |
| 1579 | of flag bits, so is not binary compatible, so can't be applied to 5.8.9. |
| 1580 | However, 5.8.9 has a work-around that implements the same bug fix. If the |
| 1581 | referent has multiple references, then all the other references are located and |
| 1582 | corrected. A full search is avoided whenever possible by scanning lexicals |
| 1583 | outwards from the current subroutine, and the argument stack. |
| 1584 | |
| 1585 | A certain well known Linux vendor applied incomplete versions of this bug fix |
| 1586 | to their F</usr/bin/perl> and then prematurely closed bug reports about |
| 1587 | performance issues without consulting back upstream. This not being enough, |
| 1588 | they then proceeded to ignore the necessary fixes to these unreleased changes |
| 1589 | for 11 months, until massive pressure was applied by their long-suffering |
| 1590 | paying customers, catalysed by the failings being featured on a prominent blog |
| 1591 | and Slashdot. |
| 1592 | |
| 1593 | =head2 C<strict> now propagates correctly into string evals |
| 1594 | |
| 1595 | Under 5.8.8 and earlier: |
| 1596 | |
| 1597 | $ perl5.8.8 -e 'use strict; eval "use foo bar" or die $@' |
| 1598 | Can't locate foo.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ... .) at (eval 1) line 2. |
| 1599 | BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 2. |
| 1600 | |
| 1601 | Under 5.8.9 and later: |
| 1602 | |
| 1603 | $ perl5.8.9 -e 'use strict; eval "use foo bar" or die $@' |
| 1604 | Bareword "bar" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (eval 1) line 1. |
| 1605 | |
| 1606 | This may cause problems with programs that parse the error message and rely |
| 1607 | on the buggy behaviour. |
| 1608 | |
| 1609 | =head2 Other fixes |
| 1610 | |
| 1611 | =over |
| 1612 | |
| 1613 | =item * |
| 1614 | |
| 1615 | The tokenizer no longer treats C<=cute> (and other words beginning |
| 1616 | with C<=cut>) as a synonym for C<=cut>. |
| 1617 | |
| 1618 | =item * |
| 1619 | |
| 1620 | Calling C<CORE::require> |
| 1621 | |
| 1622 | C<CORE::require> and C<CORE::do> were always parsed as C<require> and C<do> |
| 1623 | when they were overridden. This is now fixed. |
| 1624 | |
| 1625 | =item * |
| 1626 | |
| 1627 | Stopped memory leak on long F</etc/groups> entries. |
| 1628 | |
| 1629 | =item * |
| 1630 | |
| 1631 | C<while (my $x ...) { ...; redo }> shouldn't C<undef $x>. |
| 1632 | |
| 1633 | In the presence of C<my> in the conditional of a C<while()>, C<until()>, |
| 1634 | or C<for(;;)> loop, we now add an extra scope to the body so that C<redo> |
| 1635 | doesn't C<undef> the lexical. |
| 1636 | |
| 1637 | =item * |
| 1638 | |
| 1639 | The C<encoding> pragma now correctly ignores anything following an C<@> |
| 1640 | character in the C<LC_ALL> and C<LANG> environment variables. [RT # 49646] |
| 1641 | |
| 1642 | =item * |
| 1643 | |
| 1644 | A segfault observed with some F<gcc> 3.3 optimisations is resolved. |
| 1645 | |
| 1646 | =item * |
| 1647 | |
| 1648 | A possible segfault when C<unpack> used in scalar context with C<()> groups |
| 1649 | is resolved. [RT #50256] |
| 1650 | |
| 1651 | =item * |
| 1652 | |
| 1653 | Resolved issue where C<$!> could be changed by a signal handler interrupting |
| 1654 | a C<system> call. |
| 1655 | |
| 1656 | =item * |
| 1657 | |
| 1658 | Fixed bug RT #37886, symbolic dereferencing was allowed in the argument of |
| 1659 | C<defined> even under the influence of C<use strict 'refs'>. |
| 1660 | |
| 1661 | =item * |
| 1662 | |
| 1663 | Fixed bug RT #43207, where C<lc>/C<uc> inside C<sort> affected the return |
| 1664 | value. |
| 1665 | |
| 1666 | =item * |
| 1667 | |
| 1668 | Fixed bug RT #45607, where C<*{"BONK"} = \&{"BONK"}> didn't work correctly. |
| 1669 | |
| 1670 | =item * |
| 1671 | |
| 1672 | Fixed bug RT #35878, croaking from a XSUB called via C<goto &xsub> corrupts perl |
| 1673 | internals. |
| 1674 | |
| 1675 | =item * |
| 1676 | |
| 1677 | Fixed bug RT #32539, F<DynaLoader.o> is moved into F<libperl.so> to avoid the |
| 1678 | need to statically link DynaLoader into the stub perl executable. With this |
| 1679 | F<libperl.so> provides everything needed to get a functional embedded perl |
| 1680 | interpreter to run. |
| 1681 | |
| 1682 | =item * |
| 1683 | |
| 1684 | Fix bug RT #36267 so that assigning to a tied hash doesn't change the |
| 1685 | underlying hash. |
| 1686 | |
| 1687 | =item * |
| 1688 | |
| 1689 | Fix bug RT #6006, regexp replaces using large replacement variables |
| 1690 | fail some of the time, I<i.e.> when substitution contains something |
| 1691 | like C<${10}> (note the bracket) instead of just C<$10>. |
| 1692 | |
| 1693 | =item * |
| 1694 | |
| 1695 | Fix bug RT #45053, C<Perl_newCONSTSUB()> is now thread safe. |
| 1696 | |
| 1697 | =back |
| 1698 | |
| 1699 | =head2 Platform Specific Fixes |
| 1700 | |
| 1701 | =head3 Darwin / MacOS X |
| 1702 | |
| 1703 | =over 4 |
| 1704 | |
| 1705 | =item * |
| 1706 | |
| 1707 | Various improvements to 64 bit builds. |
| 1708 | |
| 1709 | =item * |
| 1710 | |
| 1711 | Mutex protection added in C<PerlIOStdio_close()> to avoid race conditions. |
| 1712 | Hopefully this fixes failures in the threads tests F<free.t> and F<blocks.t>. |
| 1713 | |
| 1714 | =item * |
| 1715 | |
| 1716 | Added forked terminal support to the debugger, with the ability to update the |
| 1717 | window title. |
| 1718 | |
| 1719 | =back |
| 1720 | |
| 1721 | =head3 OS/2 |
| 1722 | |
| 1723 | =over 4 |
| 1724 | |
| 1725 | =item * |
| 1726 | |
| 1727 | A build problem with specifying C<USE_MULTI> and C<USE_ITHREADS> but without |
| 1728 | C<USE_IMP_SYS> has been fixed. |
| 1729 | |
| 1730 | =item * |
| 1731 | |
| 1732 | C<OS2::REXX> upgraded to version 1.04 |
| 1733 | |
| 1734 | =back |
| 1735 | |
| 1736 | =head3 Tru64 |
| 1737 | |
| 1738 | =over 4 |
| 1739 | |
| 1740 | =item * |
| 1741 | |
| 1742 | Aligned floating point build policies for F<cc> and F<gcc>. |
| 1743 | |
| 1744 | =back |
| 1745 | |
| 1746 | =head3 RedHat Linux |
| 1747 | |
| 1748 | =over 4 |
| 1749 | |
| 1750 | =item * |
| 1751 | |
| 1752 | Revisited a patch from 5.6.1 for RH7.2 for Intel's F<icc> [RT #7916], added an |
| 1753 | additional check for C<$Config{gccversion}>. |
| 1754 | |
| 1755 | =back |
| 1756 | |
| 1757 | =head3 Solaris/i386 |
| 1758 | |
| 1759 | =over 4 |
| 1760 | |
| 1761 | =item * |
| 1762 | |
| 1763 | Use C<-DPTR_IS_LONG> when using 64 bit integers |
| 1764 | |
| 1765 | =back |
| 1766 | |
| 1767 | =head3 VMS |
| 1768 | |
| 1769 | =over 4 |
| 1770 | |
| 1771 | =item * |
| 1772 | |
| 1773 | Fixed C<PerlIO::Scalar> in-memory file record-style reads. |
| 1774 | |
| 1775 | =item * |
| 1776 | |
| 1777 | pipe shutdown at process exit should now be more robust. |
| 1778 | |
| 1779 | =item * |
| 1780 | |
| 1781 | Bugs in VMS exit handling tickled by C<Test::Harness> 2.64 have been fixed. |
| 1782 | |
| 1783 | =item * |
| 1784 | |
| 1785 | Fix C<fcntl()> locking capability test in F<configure.com>. |
| 1786 | |
| 1787 | =item * |
| 1788 | |
| 1789 | Replaced C<shrplib='define'> with C<useshrplib='true'> on VMS. |
| 1790 | |
| 1791 | =back |
| 1792 | |
| 1793 | =head3 Windows |
| 1794 | |
| 1795 | =over 4 |
| 1796 | |
| 1797 | =item * |
| 1798 | |
| 1799 | C<File::Find> used to fail when the target directory is a bare drive letter and |
| 1800 | C<no_chdir> is 1 (the default is 0). [RT #41555] |
| 1801 | |
| 1802 | =item * |
| 1803 | |
| 1804 | A build problem with specifying C<USE_MULTI> and C<USE_ITHREADS> but without |
| 1805 | C<USE_IMP_SYS> has been fixed. |
| 1806 | |
| 1807 | =item * |
| 1808 | |
| 1809 | The process id is no longer truncated to 16 bits on some Windows platforms |
| 1810 | ( http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=72443 ) |
| 1811 | |
| 1812 | =item * |
| 1813 | |
| 1814 | Fixed bug RT #54828 in F<perlio.c> where calling C<binmode> on Win32 and Cygwin |
| 1815 | may cause a segmentation fault. |
| 1816 | |
| 1817 | =back |
| 1818 | |
| 1819 | =head2 Smaller fixes |
| 1820 | |
| 1821 | =over 4 |
| 1822 | |
| 1823 | =item * |
| 1824 | |
| 1825 | It is now possible to overload C<eq> when using C<nomethod>. |
| 1826 | |
| 1827 | =item * |
| 1828 | |
| 1829 | Various problems using C<overload> with 64 bit integers corrected. |
| 1830 | |
| 1831 | =item * |
| 1832 | |
| 1833 | The reference count of C<PerlIO> file descriptors is now correctly handled. |
| 1834 | |
| 1835 | =item * |
| 1836 | |
| 1837 | On VMS, escaped dots will be preserved when converted to Unix syntax. |
| 1838 | |
| 1839 | =item * |
| 1840 | |
| 1841 | C<keys %+> no longer throws an C<'ambiguous'> warning. |
| 1842 | |
| 1843 | =item * |
| 1844 | |
| 1845 | Using C<#!perl -d> could trigger an assertion, which has been fixed. |
| 1846 | |
| 1847 | =item * |
| 1848 | |
| 1849 | Don't stringify tied code references in C<@INC> when calling C<require>. |
| 1850 | |
| 1851 | =item * |
| 1852 | |
| 1853 | Code references in C<@INC> report the correct file name when C<__FILE__> is |
| 1854 | used. |
| 1855 | |
| 1856 | =item * |
| 1857 | |
| 1858 | Width and precision in sprintf didn't handle characters above 255 correctly. |
| 1859 | [RT #40473] |
| 1860 | |
| 1861 | =item * |
| 1862 | |
| 1863 | List slices with indices out of range now work more consistently. |
| 1864 | [RT #39882] |
| 1865 | |
| 1866 | =item * |
| 1867 | |
| 1868 | A change introduced with perl 5.8.1 broke the parsing of arguments of the form |
| 1869 | C<-foo=bar> with the C<-s> on the <#!> line. This has been fixed. See |
| 1870 | http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=43483 |
| 1871 | |
| 1872 | =item * |
| 1873 | |
| 1874 | C<tr///> is now threadsafe. Previously it was storing a swash inside its OP, |
| 1875 | rather than in a pad. |
| 1876 | |
| 1877 | =item * |
| 1878 | |
| 1879 | F<pod2html> labels anchors more consistently and handles nested definition |
| 1880 | lists better. |
| 1881 | |
| 1882 | =item * |
| 1883 | |
| 1884 | C<threads> cleanup veto has been extended to include C<perl_free()> and |
| 1885 | C<perl_destruct()> |
| 1886 | |
| 1887 | =item * |
| 1888 | |
| 1889 | On some systems, changes to C<$ENV{TZ}> would not always be |
| 1890 | respected by the underlying calls to C<localtime_r()>. Perl now |
| 1891 | forces the inspection of the environment on these systems. |
| 1892 | |
| 1893 | =item * |
| 1894 | |
| 1895 | The special variable C<$^R> is now more consistently set when executing |
| 1896 | regexps using the C<(?{...})> construct. In particular, it will still |
| 1897 | be set even if backreferences or optional sub-patterns C<(?:...)?> are |
| 1898 | used. |
| 1899 | |
| 1900 | =back |
| 1901 | |
| 1902 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
| 1903 | |
| 1904 | =head2 panic: sv_chop %s |
| 1905 | |
| 1906 | This new fatal error occurs when the C routine C<Perl_sv_chop()> was passed a |
| 1907 | position that is not within the scalar's string buffer. This is caused by |
| 1908 | buggy XS code, and at this point recovery is not possible. |
| 1909 | |
| 1910 | =head2 Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded |
| 1911 | |
| 1912 | This new fatal error occurs when the perl process has to abort due to |
| 1913 | too many pending signals, which is bound to prevent perl from being |
| 1914 | able to handle further incoming signals safely. |
| 1915 | |
| 1916 | =head2 panic: attempt to call %s in %s |
| 1917 | |
| 1918 | This new fatal error occurs when the ACL version file test operator is used |
| 1919 | where it is not available on the current platform. Earlier checks mean that |
| 1920 | it should never be possible to get this. |
| 1921 | |
| 1922 | =head2 FETCHSIZE returned a negative value |
| 1923 | |
| 1924 | New error indicating that a tied array has claimed to have a negative |
| 1925 | number of elements. |
| 1926 | |
| 1927 | =head2 Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d |
| 1928 | |
| 1929 | Previously the internal error from the SV upgrade code was the less informative |
| 1930 | I<Can't upgrade that kind of scalar>. It now reports the current internal type, |
| 1931 | and the new type requested. |
| 1932 | |
| 1933 | =head2 %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine |
| 1934 | |
| 1935 | This error, thrown if an invalid argument is provided to C<exists> now |
| 1936 | correctly includes "or a subroutine". [RT #38955] |
| 1937 | |
| 1938 | =head2 Cannot make the non-overridable builtin %s fatal |
| 1939 | |
| 1940 | This error in C<Fatal> previously did not show the name of the builtin in |
| 1941 | question (now represented by %s above). |
| 1942 | |
| 1943 | =head2 Unrecognized character '%s' in column %d |
| 1944 | |
| 1945 | This error previously did not state the column. |
| 1946 | |
| 1947 | =head2 Offset outside string |
| 1948 | |
| 1949 | This can now also be generated by a C<seek> on a file handle using |
| 1950 | C<PerlIO::scalar>. |
| 1951 | |
| 1952 | =head2 Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regexp; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ |
| 1953 | |
| 1954 | New error, introduced as part of the fix to RT #40641 to handle encoding |
| 1955 | of Unicode characters in regular expression comments. |
| 1956 | |
| 1957 | =head2 Your machine doesn't support dump/undump. |
| 1958 | |
| 1959 | A more informative fatal error issued when calling C<dump> on Win32 and |
| 1960 | Cygwin. (Given that the purpose of C<dump> is to abort with a core dump, |
| 1961 | and core dumps can't be produced on these platforms, this is more useful than |
| 1962 | silently exiting.) |
| 1963 | |
| 1964 | =head1 Changed Internals |
| 1965 | |
| 1966 | The perl sources can now be compiled with a C++ compiler instead of a C |
| 1967 | compiler. A necessary implementation details is that under C++, the macro |
| 1968 | C<XS> used to define XSUBs now includes an C<extern "C"> definition. A side |
| 1969 | effect of this is that B<C++> code that used the construction |
| 1970 | |
| 1971 | typedef XS(SwigPerlWrapper); |
| 1972 | |
| 1973 | now needs to be written |
| 1974 | |
| 1975 | typedef XSPROTO(SwigPerlWrapper); |
| 1976 | |
| 1977 | using the new C<XSPROTO> macro, in order to compile. C extensions are |
| 1978 | unaffected, although C extensions are encouraged to use C<XSPROTO> too. |
| 1979 | This change was present in the 5.10.0 release of perl, so any actively |
| 1980 | maintained code that happened to use this construction should already have |
| 1981 | been adapted. Code that needs changing will fail with a compilation error. |
| 1982 | |
| 1983 | C<set> magic on localizing/assigning to a magic variable will now only |
| 1984 | trigger for I<container magics>, i.e. it will for C<%ENV> or C<%SIG> |
| 1985 | but not for C<$#array>. |
| 1986 | |
| 1987 | The new API macro C<newSVpvs()> can be used in place of constructions such as |
| 1988 | C<newSVpvn("ISA", 3)>. It takes a single string constant, and at C compile |
| 1989 | time determines its length. |
| 1990 | |
| 1991 | The new API function C<Perl_newSV_type()> can be used as a more efficient |
| 1992 | replacement of the common idiom |
| 1993 | |
| 1994 | sv = newSV(0); |
| 1995 | sv_upgrade(sv, type); |
| 1996 | |
| 1997 | Similarly C<Perl_newSVpvn_flags()> can be used to combine |
| 1998 | C<Perl_newSVpv()> with C<Perl_sv_2mortal()> or the equivalent |
| 1999 | C<Perl_sv_newmortal()> with C<Perl_sv_setpvn()> |
| 2000 | |
| 2001 | Two new macros C<mPUSHs()> and C<mXPUSHs()> are added, to make it easier to |
| 2002 | push mortal SVs onto the stack. They were then used to fix several bugs where |
| 2003 | values on the stack had not been mortalised. |
| 2004 | |
| 2005 | A C<Perl_signbit()> function was added to test the sign of an C<NV>. It |
| 2006 | maps to the system one when available. |
| 2007 | |
| 2008 | C<Perl_av_reify()>, C<Perl_lex_end()>, C<Perl_mod()>, C<Perl_op_clear()>, |
| 2009 | C<Perl_pop_return()>, C<Perl_qerror()>, C<Perl_setdefout()>, |
| 2010 | C<Perl_vivify_defelem()> and C<Perl_yylex()> are now visible to extensions. |
| 2011 | This was required to allow C<Data::Alias> to work on Windows. |
| 2012 | |
| 2013 | C<Perl_find_runcv()> is now visible to perl core extensions. This was required |
| 2014 | to allow C<Sub::Current> to work on Windows. |
| 2015 | |
| 2016 | C<ptr_table*> functions are now available in unthreaded perl. C<Storable> |
| 2017 | takes advantage of this. |
| 2018 | |
| 2019 | There have been many small cleanups made to the internals. In particular, |
| 2020 | C<Perl_sv_upgrade()> has been simplified considerably, with a straight-through |
| 2021 | code path that uses C<memset()> and C<memcpy()> to initialise the new body, |
| 2022 | rather than assignment via multiple temporary variables. It has also |
| 2023 | benefited from simplification and de-duplication of the arena management |
| 2024 | code. |
| 2025 | |
| 2026 | A lot of small improvements in the code base were made due to reports from |
| 2027 | the Coverity static code analyzer. |
| 2028 | |
| 2029 | Corrected use and documentation of C<Perl_gv_stashpv()>, C<Perl_gv_stashpvn()>, |
| 2030 | C<Perl_gv_stashsv()> functions (last parameter is a bitmask, not boolean). |
| 2031 | |
| 2032 | C<PERL_SYS_INIT>, C<PERL_SYS_INIT3> and C<PERL_SYS_TERM> macros have been |
| 2033 | changed into functions. |
| 2034 | |
| 2035 | C<PERLSYS_TERM> no longer requires a context. C<PerlIO_teardown()> |
| 2036 | is now called without a context, and debugging output in this function has |
| 2037 | been disabled because that required that an interpreter was present, an invalid |
| 2038 | assumption at termination time. |
| 2039 | |
| 2040 | All compile time options which affect binary compatibility have been grouped |
| 2041 | together into a global variable (C<PL_bincompat_options>). |
| 2042 | |
| 2043 | The values of C<PERL_REVISION>, C<PERL_VERSION> and C<PERL_SUBVERSION> are |
| 2044 | now baked into global variables (and hence into any shared perl library). |
| 2045 | Additionally under C<MULTIPLICITY>, the perl executable now records the size of |
| 2046 | the interpreter structure (total, and for this version). Coupled with |
| 2047 | C<PL_bincompat_options> this will allow 5.8.10 (and later), when compiled with a |
| 2048 | shared perl library, to perform sanity checks in C<main()> to verify that the |
| 2049 | shared library is indeed binary compatible. |
| 2050 | |
| 2051 | Symbolic references can now have embedded NULs. The new public function |
| 2052 | C<Perl_get_cvn_flags()> can be used in extensions if you have to handle them. |
| 2053 | |
| 2054 | =head2 Macro cleanups |
| 2055 | |
| 2056 | The core code, and XS code in F<ext> that is not dual-lived on CPAN, no longer |
| 2057 | uses the macros C<PL_na>, C<NEWSV()>, C<Null()>, C<Nullav>, C<Nullcv>, |
| 2058 | C<Nullhv>, C<Nullhv> I<etc>. Their use is discouraged in new code, |
| 2059 | particularly C<PL_na>, which is a small performance hit. |
| 2060 | |
| 2061 | =head1 New Tests |
| 2062 | |
| 2063 | Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests. Some core specific |
| 2064 | tests have been added: |
| 2065 | |
| 2066 | =over 4 |
| 2067 | |
| 2068 | =item ext/DynaLoader/t/DynaLoader.t |
| 2069 | |
| 2070 | Tests for the C<DynaLoader> module. |
| 2071 | |
| 2072 | =item t/comp/fold.t |
| 2073 | |
| 2074 | Tests for compile-time constant folding. |
| 2075 | |
| 2076 | =item t/io/pvbm.t |
| 2077 | |
| 2078 | Tests incorporated from 5.10.0 which check that there is no unexpected |
| 2079 | interaction between the internal types C<PVBM> and C<PVGV>. |
| 2080 | |
| 2081 | =item t/lib/proxy_constant_subs.t |
| 2082 | |
| 2083 | Tests for the new form of constant subroutines. |
| 2084 | |
| 2085 | =item t/op/attrhand.t |
| 2086 | |
| 2087 | Tests for C<Attribute::Handlers>. |
| 2088 | |
| 2089 | =item t/op/dbm.t |
| 2090 | |
| 2091 | Tests for C<dbmopen>. |
| 2092 | |
| 2093 | =item t/op/inccode-tie.t |
| 2094 | |
| 2095 | Calls all tests in F<t/op/inccode.t> after first tying C<@INC>. |
| 2096 | |
| 2097 | =item t/op/incfilter.t |
| 2098 | |
| 2099 | Tests for source filters returned from code references in C<@INC>. |
| 2100 | |
| 2101 | =item t/op/kill0.t |
| 2102 | |
| 2103 | Tests for RT #30970. |
| 2104 | |
| 2105 | =item t/op/qrstack.t |
| 2106 | |
| 2107 | Tests for RT #41484. |
| 2108 | |
| 2109 | =item t/op/qr.t |
| 2110 | |
| 2111 | Tests for the C<qr//> construct. |
| 2112 | |
| 2113 | =item t/op/regexp_qr_embed.t |
| 2114 | |
| 2115 | Tests for the C<qr//> construct within another regexp. |
| 2116 | |
| 2117 | =item t/op/regexp_qr.t |
| 2118 | |
| 2119 | Tests for the C<qr//> construct. |
| 2120 | |
| 2121 | =item t/op/rxcode.t |
| 2122 | |
| 2123 | Tests for RT #32840. |
| 2124 | |
| 2125 | =item t/op/studytied.t |
| 2126 | |
| 2127 | Tests for C<study> on tied scalars. |
| 2128 | |
| 2129 | =item t/op/substT.t |
| 2130 | |
| 2131 | Tests for C<subst> run under C<-T> mode. |
| 2132 | |
| 2133 | =item t/op/symbolcache.t |
| 2134 | |
| 2135 | Tests for C<undef> and C<delete> on stash entries that are bound to |
| 2136 | subroutines or methods. |
| 2137 | |
| 2138 | =item t/op/upgrade.t |
| 2139 | |
| 2140 | Tests for C<Perl_sv_upgrade()>. |
| 2141 | |
| 2142 | =item t/mro/package_aliases.t |
| 2143 | |
| 2144 | MRO tests for C<isa> and package aliases. |
| 2145 | |
| 2146 | =item t/pod/twice.t |
| 2147 | |
| 2148 | Tests for calling C<Pod::Parser> twice. |
| 2149 | |
| 2150 | =item t/run/cloexec.t |
| 2151 | |
| 2152 | Tests for inheriting file descriptors across C<exec> (close-on-exec). |
| 2153 | |
| 2154 | =item t/uni/cache.t |
| 2155 | |
| 2156 | Tests for the UTF-8 caching code. |
| 2157 | |
| 2158 | =item t/uni/chr.t |
| 2159 | |
| 2160 | Test that strange encodings do not upset C<Perl_pp_chr()>. |
| 2161 | |
| 2162 | =item t/uni/greek.t |
| 2163 | |
| 2164 | Tests for RT #40641. |
| 2165 | |
| 2166 | =item t/uni/latin2.t |
| 2167 | |
| 2168 | Tests for RT #40641. |
| 2169 | |
| 2170 | =item t/uni/overload.t |
| 2171 | |
| 2172 | Tests for returning Unicode from overloaded values. |
| 2173 | |
| 2174 | =item t/uni/tie.t |
| 2175 | |
| 2176 | Tests for returning Unicode from tied variables. |
| 2177 | |
| 2178 | =back |
| 2179 | |
| 2180 | =head1 Known Problems |
| 2181 | |
| 2182 | There are no known new bugs. |
| 2183 | |
| 2184 | However, programs that rely on bugs that have been fixed will have problems. |
| 2185 | Also, many bug fixes present in 5.10.0 can't be back-ported to the 5.8.x |
| 2186 | branch, because they require changes that are binary incompatible, or because |
| 2187 | the code changes are too large and hence too risky to incorporate. |
| 2188 | |
| 2189 | We have only limited volunteer labour, and the maintenance burden is |
| 2190 | getting increasingly complex. Hence this will be the last significant |
| 2191 | release of the 5.8.x series. Any future releases of 5.8.x will likely |
| 2192 | only be to deal with security issues, and platform build |
| 2193 | failures. Hence you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you have |
| 2194 | not started already. Alternatively, if business requirements constrain |
| 2195 | you to continue to use 5.8.x, you may wish to consider commercial |
| 2196 | support from firms such as ActiveState. |
| 2197 | |
| 2198 | =head1 Platform Specific Notes |
| 2199 | |
| 2200 | =head2 Win32 |
| 2201 | |
| 2202 | C<readdir()>, C<cwd()>, C<$^X> and C<@INC> now use the alternate (short) |
| 2203 | filename if the long name is outside the current codepage (Jan Dubois). |
| 2204 | |
| 2205 | =head3 Updated Modules |
| 2206 | |
| 2207 | =over 4 |
| 2208 | |
| 2209 | =item * |
| 2210 | |
| 2211 | C<Win32> upgraded to version 0.38. Now has a documented 'WinVista' response |
| 2212 | from C<GetOSName> and support for Vista's privilege elevation in C<IsAdminUser>. |
| 2213 | Support for Unicode characters in path names. Improved cygwin and Win64 |
| 2214 | compatibility. |
| 2215 | |
| 2216 | =item * |
| 2217 | |
| 2218 | C<Win32API> updated to 0.1001_01 |
| 2219 | |
| 2220 | =item * |
| 2221 | |
| 2222 | C<killpg()> support added to C<MSWin32> (Jan Dubois). |
| 2223 | |
| 2224 | =item * |
| 2225 | |
| 2226 | C<File::Spec::Win32> upgraded to version 3.2701 |
| 2227 | |
| 2228 | =back |
| 2229 | |
| 2230 | =head2 OS/2 |
| 2231 | |
| 2232 | =head3 Updated Modules |
| 2233 | |
| 2234 | =over 4 |
| 2235 | |
| 2236 | =item * |
| 2237 | |
| 2238 | C<OS2::Process> upgraded to 1.03 |
| 2239 | |
| 2240 | Ilya Zakharevich has added and documented several C<Window*> and C<Clipbrd*> |
| 2241 | functions. |
| 2242 | |
| 2243 | =item * |
| 2244 | |
| 2245 | C<OS2::REXX::DLL>, C<OS2::REXX> updated to version 1.03 |
| 2246 | |
| 2247 | =back |
| 2248 | |
| 2249 | =head2 VMS |
| 2250 | |
| 2251 | =head3 Updated Modules |
| 2252 | |
| 2253 | =over 4 |
| 2254 | |
| 2255 | =item * |
| 2256 | |
| 2257 | C<DCLsym> upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 2258 | |
| 2259 | =item * |
| 2260 | |
| 2261 | C<Stdio> upgraded to version 2.4 |
| 2262 | |
| 2263 | =item * |
| 2264 | |
| 2265 | C<VMS::XSSymSet> upgraded to 1.1. |
| 2266 | |
| 2267 | =back |
| 2268 | |
| 2269 | =head1 Obituary |
| 2270 | |
| 2271 | Nick Ing-Simmons, long time Perl hacker, author of the C<Tk> and C<Encode> |
| 2272 | modules, F<perlio.c> in the core, and 5.003_02 pumpking, died of a heart |
| 2273 | attack on 25th September 2006. He will be missed. |
| 2274 | |
| 2275 | =head1 Acknowledgements |
| 2276 | |
| 2277 | Some of the work in this release was funded by a TPF grant. |
| 2278 | |
| 2279 | Steve Hay worked behind the scenes working out the causes of the differences |
| 2280 | between core modules, their CPAN releases, and previous core releases, and |
| 2281 | the best way to rectify them. He doesn't want to do it again. I know this |
| 2282 | feeling, and I'm very glad he did it this time, instead of me. |
| 2283 | |
| 2284 | Paul Fenwick assembled a team of 18 volunteers, who broke the back of writing |
| 2285 | this document. In particular, Bradley Dean, Eddy Tan, and Vincent Pit |
| 2286 | provided half the team's contribution. |
| 2287 | |
| 2288 | Schwern verified the list of updated module versions, correcting quite a few |
| 2289 | errors that I (and everyone else) had missed, both wrongly stated module |
| 2290 | versions, and changed modules that had not been listed. |
| 2291 | |
| 2292 | The crack Berlin-based QA team of Andreas KE<ouml>nig and Slaven Rezic |
| 2293 | tirelessly re-built snapshots, tested most everything CPAN against |
| 2294 | them, and then identified the changes responsible for any module regressions, |
| 2295 | ensuring that several show-stopper bugs were stomped before the first release |
| 2296 | candidate was cut. |
| 2297 | |
| 2298 | The other core committers contributed most of the changes, and applied most |
| 2299 | of the patches sent in by the hundreds of contributors listed in F<AUTHORS>. |
| 2300 | |
| 2301 | And obviously, Larry Wall, without whom we wouldn't have Perl. |
| 2302 | |
| 2303 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
| 2304 | |
| 2305 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 2306 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 2307 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be |
| 2308 | information at http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page. |
| 2309 | |
| 2310 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
| 2311 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 2312 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 2313 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 2314 | analysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and search |
| 2315 | the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/ |
| 2316 | |
| 2317 | If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it |
| 2318 | inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send |
| 2319 | it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription |
| 2320 | unarchived mailing list, which includes |
| 2321 | all the core committers, who will be able |
| 2322 | to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help |
| 2323 | co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all |
| 2324 | platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security |
| 2325 | issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN. |
| 2326 | |
| 2327 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 2328 | |
| 2329 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
| 2330 | |
| 2331 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
| 2332 | |
| 2333 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
| 2334 | |
| 2335 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
| 2336 | |
| 2337 | =cut |