+=encoding utf8
+
=head1 NAME
perlpolicy - Various and sundry policies and commitments related to the Perl core
-engine), while others seem to do nothing but complain. In other
words, it's your usual mix of technical people.
+Among these people are the core Perl team. These are trusted volunteers
+involved in the ongoing development of the Perl language and interpreter.
+They are not required to be language developers or committers.
+
Over this group of porters presides Larry Wall. He has the final word
in what does and does not change in any of the Perl programming languages.
-These days, Larry spends most of his time on Perl 6, while Perl 5 is
-shepherded by a "pumpking", a porter responsible for deciding what
+These days, Larry spends most of his time on Raku, while Perl 5 is
+shepherded by a steering council of porters responsible for deciding what
goes into each release and ensuring that releases happen on a regular
basis.
Larry sees Perl development along the lines of the US government:
-there's the Legislature (the porters), the Executive branch (the
--pumpking), and the Supreme Court (Larry). The legislature can
-discuss and submit patches to the executive branch all they like, but
-the executive branch is free to veto them. Rarely, the Supreme Court
-will side with the executive branch over the legislature, or the
-legislature over the executive branch. Mostly, however, the
-legislature and the executive branch are supposed to get along and
-work out their differences without impeachment or court cases.
+there's the Legislature (the porters, represented by the core team), the
+Executive branch (the steering council), and the Supreme Court (Larry).
+The legislature can discuss and submit patches to the executive branch
+all they like, but the executive branch is free to veto them. Rarely,
+the Supreme Court will side with the executive branch over the
+legislature, or the legislature over the executive branch. Mostly,
+however, the legislature and the executive branch are supposed to get
+along and work out their differences without impeachment or court cases.
You might sometimes see reference to Rule 1 and Rule 2. Larry's power
as Supreme Court is expressed in The Rules:
Got that? Larry is always right, even when he was wrong. It's rare
to see either Rule exercised, but they are often alluded to.
+For the specifics on how the members of the core team and steering
+council are elected or rotated, consult L<perlgov>, which spells it all
+out in detail.
+
=head1 MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT
Perl 5 is developed by a community, not a corporate entity. Every change
=item *
-We "officially" support the two most recent stable release series. 5.14.x
-and earlier are now out of support. As of the release of 5.20.0, we will
-"officially" end support for Perl 5.16.x, other than providing security
+We "officially" support the two most recent stable release series. 5.26.x
+and earlier are now out of support. As of the release of 5.32.0, we will
+"officially" end support for Perl 5.28.x, other than providing security
updates as described below.
=item *
advice to you as you do so and, where possible will try to apply
those patches to the relevant -maint branches in git, though we may or
may not choose to make numbered releases or "official" patches
-available. Contact us at E<lt>perl5-security-report@perl.orgE<gt>
-to begin that process.
+available. See L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION>
+for details on how to begin that process.
=back
years and decades, but not at the expense of our user community.
Existing syntax and semantics should only be marked for destruction in
-very limited circumstances. If a given language feature's continued
-inclusion in the language will cause significant harm to the language
-or prevent us from making needed changes to the runtime, then it may
-be considered for deprecation.
-
-Any language change which breaks backward-compatibility should be able to
-be enabled or disabled lexically. Unless code at a given scope declares
-that it wants the new behavior, that new behavior should be disabled.
-Which backward-incompatible changes are controlled implicitly by a
-'use v5.x.y' is a decision which should be made by the pumpking in
-consultation with the community.
-
-When a backward-incompatible change can't be toggled lexically, the decision
-to change the language must be considered very, very carefully. If it's
-possible to move the old syntax or semantics out of the core language
-and into XS-land, that XS module should be enabled by default unless
-the user declares that they want a newer revision of Perl.
+very limited circumstances. If they are believed to be very rarely used,
+stand in the way of actual improvement to the Perl language or perl
+interpreter, and if affected code can be easily updated to continue
+working, they may be considered for removal. When in doubt, caution
+dictates that we will favor backward compatibility. When a feature is
+deprecated, a statement of reasoning describing the decision process
+will be posted, and a link to it will be provided in the relevant
+perldelta documents.
+
+Using a lexical pragma to enable or disable legacy behavior should be
+considered when appropriate, and in the absence of any pragma legacy
+behavior should be enabled. Which backward-incompatible changes are
+controlled implicitly by a 'use v5.x.y' is a decision which should be
+made by the steering council in consultation with the community.
Historically, we've held ourselves to a far higher standard than
backward-compatibility -- bugward-compatibility. Any accident of
New syntax and semantics which don't break existing language constructs
and syntax have a much lower bar. They merely need to prove themselves
-to be useful, elegant, well designed, and well tested.
+to be useful, elegant, well designed, and well tested. In most cases,
+these additions will be marked as I<experimental> for some time. See
+below for more on that.
=head2 Terminology
features, you should contact the perl5-porters mailinglist if you find
an experimental feature useful and want to help shape its future.
+Experimental features must be experimental in two stable releases before being
+marked non-experimental. Experimental features will only have their
+experimental status revoked when they no longer have any design-changing bugs
+open against them and when they have remained unchanged in behavior for the
+entire length of a development cycle. In other words, a feature present in
+v5.20.0 may be marked no longer experimental in v5.22.0 if and only if its
+behavior is unchanged throughout all of v5.21.
+
=item deprecated
If something in the Perl core is marked as B<deprecated>, we may remove it
=head1 MAINTENANCE BRANCHES
+New releases of maintenance branches should only contain changes that fall into
+one of the "acceptable" categories set out below, but must not contain any
+changes that fall into one of the "unacceptable" categories. (For example, a
+fix for a crashing bug must not be included if it breaks binary compatibility.)
+
+It is not necessary to include every change meeting these criteria, and in
+general the focus should be on addressing security issues, crashing bugs,
+regressions and serious installation issues. The temptation to include a
+plethora of minor changes that don't affect the installation or execution of
+perl (e.g. spelling corrections in documentation) should be resisted in order
+to reduce the overall risk of overlooking something. The intention is to
+create maintenance releases which are both worthwhile and which users can have
+full confidence in the stability of. (A secondary concern is to avoid burning
+out the maint-release manager or overwhelming other committers voting on
+changes to be included (see L</"Getting changes into a maint branch">
+below).)
+
+The following types of change may be considered acceptable, as long as they do
+not also fall into any of the "unacceptable" categories set out below:
+
=over
=item *
-New releases of maint should contain as few changes as possible.
-If there is any question about whether a given patch might merit
-inclusion in a maint release, then it almost certainly should not
-be included.
+Patches that fix CVEs or security issues. These changes should
+be passed using the security reporting mechanism rather than applied
+directly; see L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION>.
=item *
-Portability fixes, such as changes to Configure and the files in
-hints/ are acceptable. Ports of Perl to a new platform, architecture
-or OS release that involve changes to the implementation are NOT
-acceptable.
+Patches that fix crashing bugs, assertion failures and
+memory corruption but which do not otherwise change perl's
+functionality or negatively impact performance.
=item *
-Acceptable documentation updates are those that correct factual errors,
-explain significant bugs or deficiencies in the current implementation,
-or fix broken markup.
+Patches that fix regressions in perl's behavior relative to previous
+releases, no matter how old the regression, since some people may
+upgrade from very old versions of perl to the latest version.
=item *
-Patches that add new warnings or errors or deprecate features
-are not acceptable.
+Patches that fix bugs in features that were new in the corresponding 5.x.0
+stable release.
=item *
-Patches that fix crashing bugs that do not otherwise change Perl's
-functionality or negatively impact performance are acceptable.
+Patches that fix anything which prevents or seriously impacts the build
+or installation of perl.
=item *
-Patches that fix CVEs or security issues are acceptable, but should
-be run through the perl5-security-report@perl.org mailing list
-rather than applied directly.
+Portability fixes, such as changes to Configure and the files in
+the hints/ folder.
=item *
-Patches that fix regressions in perl's behavior relative to previous
-releases are acceptable.
+Minimal patches that fix platform-specific test failures.
+
+=item *
+
+Documentation updates that correct factual errors, explain significant
+bugs or deficiencies in the current implementation, or fix broken markup.
=item *
Updates to dual-life modules should consist of minimal patches to
-fix crashing or security issues (as above).
+fix crashing bugs or security issues (as above). Any changes made to
+dual-life modules for which CPAN is canonical should be coordinated with
+the upstream author.
+
+=back
+
+The following types of change are NOT acceptable:
+
+=over
=item *
-Minimal patches that fix platform-specific test failures or build or
-installation issues are acceptable. When these changes are made
-to dual-life modules for which CPAN is canonical, any changes
-should be coordinated with the upstream author.
+Patches that break binary compatibility. (Please talk to the steering
+council.)
=item *
-New versions of dual-life modules should NOT be imported into maint.
-Those belong in the next stable series.
+Patches that add or remove features.
=item *
-Patches that add or remove features are not acceptable.
+Patches that add new warnings or errors or deprecate features.
=item *
-Patches that break binary compatibility are not acceptable. (Please
-talk to a pumpking.)
+Ports of Perl to a new platform, architecture or OS release that
+involve changes to the implementation.
+
+=item *
+
+New versions of dual-life modules should NOT be imported into maint.
+Those belong in the next stable series.
=back
+If there is any question about whether a given patch might merit
+inclusion in a maint release, then it almost certainly should not
+be included.
=head2 Getting changes into a maint branch
-Historically, only the pumpking cherry-picked changes from bleadperl
-into maintperl. This has scaling problems. At the same time,
-maintenance branches of stable versions of Perl need to be treated with
-great care. To that end, as of Perl 5.12, we have a new process for
-maint branches.
-
-Any committer may cherry-pick any commit from blead to a maint branch if
-they send mail to perl5-porters announcing their intent to cherry-pick
-a specific commit along with a rationale for doing so and at least two
-other committers respond to the list giving their assent. (This policy
-applies to current and former pumpkings, as well as other committers.)
+Historically, only the single-person project manager cherry-picked
+changes from bleadperl into maintperl. This has scaling problems. At
+the same time, maintenance branches of stable versions of Perl need to
+be treated with great care. To that end, as of Perl 5.12, we have a new
+process for maint branches.
+
+Any committer may cherry-pick any commit from blead to a maint branch by
+first adding an entry to the relevant voting file in the maint-votes branch
+announcing the commit as a candidate for back-porting, and then waiting for
+at least two other committers to add their votes in support of this (i.e. a
+total of at least three votes is required before a commit may be back-ported).
+
+Most of the work involved in both rounding up a suitable set of candidate
+commits and cherry-picking those for which three votes have been cast will
+be done by the maint branch release manager, but anyone else is free to add
+other proposals if they're keen to ensure certain fixes don't get overlooked
+or fear they already have been.
+
+Other voting mechanisms may also be used instead (e.g. sending mail to
+perl5-porters and at least two other committers responding to the list
+giving their assent), as long as the same number of votes is gathered in a
+transparent manner. Specifically, proposals of which changes to cherry-pick
+must be visible to everyone on perl5-porters so that the views of everyone
+interested may be heard.
+
+It is not necessary for voting to be held on cherry-picking perldelta
+entries associated with changes that have already been cherry-picked, nor
+for the maint-release manager to obtain votes on changes required by the
+F<Porting/release_managers_guide.pod> where such changes can be applied by
+the means of cherry-picking from blead.
=head1 CONTRIBUTED MODULES
=item *
-Patches may be applied by the pumpkin holder without the explicit
+Patches may be applied by the steering council without the explicit
cooperation of the module author if and only if they are very minor,
time-critical in some fashion (such as urgent security fixes), or if
the module author cannot be reached. Those patches must still be
The version of the module distributed with Perl should, whenever
possible, be the latest version of the module as distributed by the
author (the latest non-beta version in the case of public Perl
-releases), although the pumpkin holder may hold off on upgrading the
+releases), although the steering council may hold off on upgrading the
version of the module distributed with Perl to the latest version
until the latest version has had sufficient testing.
As a last resort, however:
-
If the author's vision of the future of their module is sufficiently
-different from the vision of the pumpkin holder and perl5-porters as a
-whole so as to cause serious problems for Perl, the pumpkin holder may
+different from the vision of the steering council and perl5-porters as a
+whole so as to cause serious problems for Perl, the steering council may
choose to formally fork the version of the module in the Perl core from the
one maintained by the author. This should not be done lightly and
should B<always> if at all possible be done only after direct input
=head1 STANDARDS OF CONDUCT
The official forum for the development of perl is the perl5-porters mailing
-list, mentioned above, and its bugtracker at rt.perl.org. All participants in
-discussion there are expected to adhere to a standard of conduct.
+list, mentioned above, and its bugtracker at GitHub. Posting to the
+list and the bugtracker is not a right: all participants in discussion are
+expected to adhere to a standard of conduct.
=over 4
Always be civil.
-=item *
+=item *
Heed the moderators.
=back
-Civility is simple: stick to the facts while avoiding demeaning remarks and
-sarcasm. It is not enough to be factual. You must also be civil. Responding
-in kind to incivility is not acceptable.
+Civility is simple: stick to the facts while avoiding demeaning remarks,
+belittling other individuals, sarcasm, or a presumption of bad faith. It is
+not enough to be factual. You must also be civil. Responding in kind to
+incivility is not acceptable. If you relay otherwise-unposted comments to
+the list from a third party, you take responsibility for the content of
+those comments, and you must therefore ensure that they are civil.
-If the list moderators tell you that you are not being civil, carefully
-consider how your words have appeared before responding in any way. You may
-protest, but repeated protest in the face of a repeatedly reaffirmed decision
-is not acceptable.
+While civility is required, kindness is encouraged; if you have any doubt about
+whether you are being civil, simply ask yourself, "Am I being kind?" and aspire
+to that.
-Unacceptable behavior will result in a public and clearly identified warning.
-Repeated unacceptable behavior will result in removal from the mailing list.
-The first removal is for one month. Subsequent removals will double in length.
-After six months with no warning, a user's ban length is reset. Removals, like
-warnings, are public.
+If the list moderators tell you that you are not being civil, carefully
+consider how your words have appeared before responding in any way. Were they
+kind? You may protest, but repeated protest in the face of a repeatedly
+reaffirmed decision is not acceptable. Repeatedly protesting about the
+moderators' decisions regarding a third party is also unacceptable, as is
+continuing to initiate off-list contact with the moderators about their
+decisions.
+
+Unacceptable behavior will result in a public and clearly identified
+warning. A second instance of unacceptable behavior from the same
+individual will result in removal from the mailing list and GitHub issue
+tracker, for a period of one calendar month. The rationale for this is to
+provide an opportunity for the person to change the way they act.
+
+After the time-limited ban has been lifted, a third instance of
+unacceptable behavior will result in a further public warning. A fourth
+or subsequent instance will result in an indefinite ban. The rationale
+is that, in the face of an apparent refusal to change behavior, we must
+protect other community members from future unacceptable actions. The
+moderators may choose to lift an indefinite ban if the person in
+question affirms they will not transgress again.
+
+Removals, like warnings, are public.
The list of moderators will be public knowledge. At present, it is:
-Aaron Crane, Andy Dougherty, Ricardo Signes, Steffen Müller.
+Karen Etheridge, Ricardo Signes, Sawyer X, Todd Rinaldo, Aaron Crane.
=head1 CREDITS
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff