July 18, 2002
Perl 5.8.0 Has Been Released
The Perl 5 developer team is proud to announce the Perl Release 5.8.0.
This announcement is available online as
http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/
and also in some Eastern Asian versions (see below).
Perl 5.8.0 is a major new release of the Perl 5 language.
It incorporates all development and maintenance changes since the last
major release, 5.6.0, including all the changes of the maintenance
release, 5.6.1.
Perl 5.8.0 is available via the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network,
please choose a mirror close to you, for the full list of mirrors see
http://mirrors.cpan.org/
USA
ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (CA)
http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (CA)
http://mirrors.kernel.org/cpan/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (CA)
ftp://cpan.pair.com/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (PA)
ftp://cpan.teleglobe.net/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (NJ)
Europe
http://mirrors.sunsite.dk/cpan/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Denmark)
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Finland)
ftp://cpan.mirrors.easynet.fr/pub/ftp.cpan.org/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz
(France)
ftp://ftp.freenet.de/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Germany)
http://cpan.cybercomm.nl/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Netherlands)
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Sweden)
ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (UK)
Asia
ftp://mirrors.hknet.com/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Hong Kong)
http://www2.linuxforum.net/mirror/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (China)
ftp://ftp.ayamura.org/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Japan)
ftp://mirror.Mazic.org/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Korea)
ftp://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/UNIX/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz (Taiwan)
Perl continues to be available on a bewildering array of platforms:
all known UNIX/Linux and Microsoft platforms, and other platforms
having enough POSIX support like BeOS, Cygwin, Netware, MPE/iX, OS/2,
QNX, VMS, VOS, and z/OS. For MacOS Classic, the port is maintained
separately, follow http://dev.macperl.org/ The full list of platforms
is in the pod/perlport.pod file.
This is a source code release, not a binary release. You will need a
C development environment to build the sources. Binary releases will
be made available by various vendors.
To build and install Perl, and to find out how to report problems,
please read the INSTALL file, and any relevant README.platform file.
Note that the build times can vary considerably. Perl 5.8.0 is about
twice the size of 5.6.1, and some source code files are quite large,
so your compiler might have hard time processing them. On a fast
modern system with lots of CPU and memory the build can be a matter
of ten minutes, but on slower/older/more heavily loaded systems it
can take up to eight hours, while half an hour to an hour being common.
Also testing times vary a lot. Perl 5.8.0 has almost six times the
the tests of Perl 5.6.1. Fifteen minutes to half an hour is quite
normal, but a slow system may easily take an hour or more.
As specified in the licenses for Perl (see the files named Artistic
or Copying), THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
As always, you should conduct an appropriate level of testing before
using any new product in your production environment.
According to the release numbering scheme started in 5.6.0, Perl 5.8
will now enter maintenance state, and a new development branch called
Perl 5.9 will be started, herded by Hugo van der Sanden. The first
maintenance release of Perl 5.8 will be called 5.8.1, but before that
5.9.0 will most likely take place. The release of Perl 5.8.0 does not
mean that Perl 5.6 is no longer maintained, but neither does it mean
that a 5.6.2 will be released. It largely depends on how stable 5.8.0
turns out to be.
Since this release has extensive support for non-Latin scripts,
the announcement has also been translated to a few:
http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/p580ann.txt.big5-tw
http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/p580ann.txt.euc-cn
http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/p580ann.txt.euc-jp
http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/p580ann.txt.euc-kr
An extremely abbreviated summary of the most significant changes and
known problems is appended. A more extensive list can be found in the
file pod/perldelta.pod. An overly detailed list of changes can be
found in the Changes file.
Share and Enjoy!
-- Jarkko Hietaniemi, on behalf of the Perl5 Porters
*** Technical Details Follow ***
SUMMARY
Highlights In 5.8.0
- Better Unicode Support:
Unicode support has been much enhanced since 5.6, at all levels:
- now supports Unicode 3.2.0 (5.6.1 supports 3.0.1)
- at the language (and internals) level Unicode support is
now more ubiquitous and robust
- regular expressions now work with Unicode
- support for non-Latin encodings (such as the various
Chinese/Japanese/Korean encodings) through the Encode module
- New Threads Implementation:
A new multithreading implementation called interpreter threads,
or "ithreads" for short, is available, their use instead of the
old "5.005 threads" is strongly encouraged. The major difference
is that in ithreads any data sharing must be done explicitly.
- New IO Implementation:
the new PerlIO implementation is both a portable stdio implementation
(at the source code level) and a flexible new framework for richer
I/O behaviours
- Better Numeric Accuracy:
previous Perls relied on vendors' string-to-number and back
routines which in some cases proved to be too much trust
leading to nonportable and wrong behaviours
- 64-bit support:
64-bit support is now considered to be mature -- if your platform
supports 64-bit integers or address space, you can compile Perl to
use those
- Safe Signals:
in previous versions of Perl signals could corrupt Perl's internal state
- Many New Modules:
Digest::MD5, File::Temp, Filter::Simple, libnet, List::Util,
Memoize, MIME::Base64, Scalar::Util, Storable, Switch,
Test::More, Test::Simple, Text::Balanced, Tie::File, ...
- Extensive Regression Testing:
Perl has now almost six times as many tests as in 5.6,
and the code is test built daily on several platforms
Incompatibilities
- BINARY INCOMPATIBLE:
mainly because of the PerlIO introduction, Perl 5.8 is not
binary compatible with any earlier Perl release, XS MODULES
WILL HAVE TO BE RECOMPILED!
- AIX Dynaloading:
Perl uses now AIX dynaloading, instead of the older emulated
version, to be more compatible with other applications on AIX
- 64-bit Platforms No Longer Use Perl Malloc:
the Perl malloc seems to have various problems on platforms
with 64-bit addressing, therefore the default in these cases
is to use the native malloc
- Hashing Order Changed Once Again:
the function used in the implementation of hashes was changed
to a better one once again, but your code shouldn't be expecting
any particular key ordering
- Attributes For my Now Handled At Run-Time:
the attributes for my() are now run-time, as opposed to compile time
- REF(...) instead of SCALAR(...):
to be consistent with ref()'s results, references to references
now stringify as "REF(...)"
- Unicode Model Changed (no more "use utf8", almost)
In Perl 5.6 "Unicodeness" was lexically scoped to the operations;
in Perl 5.8 "Unicodeness" is bound to the data. The only remaining
use of "use utf8" is when the Perl script itself is written in the
UTF-8 encoding of Unicode.
- VMS: Socket Extension Dynamic, IEEE fp Default on Alpha
- the Socket extension is now dynamic rather than static, which may
cause problems in really old VMS installations
- the IEEE floating point is now the default format in OpenVMS Alpha,
see README.vms for reasons and other details
Nomenclature Change
- What the "Camel III" book called an "IO discipline"
is now called an "IO layer"
Deprecations
- dump():
the functionality of the dump command is now considered obsolete
- 5.005 threads are now to be considered deprecated;
the new "interpreter threads" implementation should be used instead
- Pseudohashes:
the user-visible implementation of pseudohashes is going to be removed
and replaced with something cleaner (also, the internal implementation
will have to go since it was found to slow down the overall hash access)
- Use of tainted data in exec LIST and system LIST:
now gives a warning, but will become fatal error in a future release
- tr///C, tr///U:
the interface was found to be a mistake, pack("C0", ...) and
pack("U0", ...) can be used instead
Known Problems
- AmigaOS cannot build Perl 5.8.0
- The Compiler Suite: bytecompiling and compiling still do not work
- Lvalue subroutines: still experimental
- Interaction of local() and tie(): the exact semantics are still in flux
- Tied/Magical Array/Hash Elements Do Not Autovivify
- Self-tying arrays and hashes: currently explicitly disallowed
---
Again, read pod/perldelta.pod, INSTALL, and README.platform. That's it.
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