policies about how the Perl 5 Porters collectively develop and maintain
the Perl core.
+=head1 GOVERNANCE
+
+=head2 Perl 5 Porters
+
+Subscribers to perl5-porters (the porters themselves) come in several flavours.
+Some are quiet curious lurkers, who rarely pitch in and instead watch
+the ongoing development to ensure they're forewarned of new changes or
+features in Perl. Some are representatives of vendors, who are there
+to make sure that Perl continues to compile and work on their
+platforms. Some patch any reported bug that they know how to fix,
+some are actively patching their pet area (threads, Win32, the regexp
+-engine), while others seem to do nothing but complain. In other
+words, it's your usual mix of technical people.
+
+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
+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.
+
+You might sometimes see reference to Rule 1 and Rule 2. Larry's power
+as Supreme Court is expressed in The Rules:
+
+=over 4
+
+=item 1
+
+Larry is always by definition right about how Perl should behave.
+This means he has final veto power on the core functionality.
+
+=item 2
+
+Larry is allowed to change his mind about any matter at a later date,
+regardless of whether he previously invoked Rule 1.
+
+=back
+
+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.
+
=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. As of the release of 5.14.0, we will "officially"
-end support for Perl 5.10, other than providing security
+We "officially" support the two most recent stable release series. 5.12.x
+and earlier are now out of support. As of the release of 5.18.0, we will
+"officially" end support for Perl 5.14.x, other than providing security
updates as described below.
=item *
=item deprecated
If something in the Perl core is marked as B<deprecated>, we may remove it
-from the core in the next stable release series, though we may not. As of
+from the core in the future, though we might not. Generally, backward
+incompatible changes will have deprecation warnings for two release
+cycles before being removed, but may be removed after just one cycle if
+the risk seems quite low or the benefits quite high.
+
+As of
Perl 5.12, deprecated features and modules warn the user as they're used.
-If you use a deprecated feature and believe that its removal from the Perl
-core would be a mistake, please contact the perl5-porters mailinglist and
-plead your case. We don't deprecate things without a good reason, but
-sometimes there's a counterargument we haven't considered. Historically,
-we did not distinguish between "deprecated" and "discouraged" features.
+When a module is deprecated, it will also be made available on CPAN.
+Installing it from CPAN will silence deprecation warnings for that module.
+
+If you use a deprecated feature or module and believe that its removal from
+the Perl core would be a mistake, please contact the perl5-porters
+mailinglist and plead your case. We don't deprecate things without a good
+reason, but sometimes there's a counterargument we haven't considered.
+Historically, we did not distinguish between "deprecated" and "discouraged"
+features.
=item discouraged
From time to time, we may mark language constructs and features which we
consider to have been mistakes as B<discouraged>. Discouraged features
-aren't candidates for removal in the next major release series, but
+aren't currently candidates for removal, but
we may later deprecate them if they're found to stand in the way of a
significant improvement to the Perl core.
=item removed
-Once a feature, construct or module has been marked as deprecated for a
-stable release cycle, we may remove it from the Perl core. Unsurprisingly,
-we say we've B<removed> these things.
+Once a feature, construct or module has been marked as deprecated, we
+may remove it from the Perl core. Unsurprisingly,
+we say we've B<removed> these things. When a module is removed, it will
+no longer ship with Perl, but will continue to be available on CPAN.
=back
=item *
+Patches that fix regressions in perl's behavior relative to previous
+releases are acceptable.
+
+=item *
+
Updates to dual-life modules should consist of minimal patches to
fix crashing or security issues (as above).
=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,
+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, we're going to try out a new process for
-maint-5.12.
+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 maint-5.12 if
+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
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff