The Perl 5 developer team is pleased to announce the Perl Release 5.8.2, the second maintenance release of Perl 5.8
Perl 5.8.2 is available via the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network
The MD5 sum for the perl-5.8.2.tar.gz is fa356b74f99166b63a68a322c3c68f91 size 11896287 bytes.
The distribution is available on CPAN as perl-5.8.2.tar.bz2, MD5 sum a312dd80922b88c6b33b2e1319470a35 size 9424944 bytes
5.8.2 is being released to fix minor binary incompatibilities discovered between 5.8.1 and 5.8.0. 5.8.2 is fully binary compatible with 5.8.0, and wherever possible also binary compatible with 5.8.1. The release also provides other minor bugfixes, including several for ithreads. Please see the perldelta for the full details.
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.
The current plan is that there will be both 5.6.2 and 5.8.3 releases. 5.6.2 is expected soon, and concentrates on just getting the 5.6 sources to compile with more modern compiler and operating system releases. 5.8.3 is planed for release in early 2004, concentrating on bug fixing and stability, and will be followed by further 5.8.x releases roughly quarterly. The work on the 5.9 branch has been started and it will culminate in 5.10.0.
To build and install Perl, and to find out how to report problems, please read the INSTALL file, and any relevant README.platform file.
As specified in the licences 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.
The "perldelta", which describes the most important changes for this release is available in the source distribution, or at:
http://search.cpan.org/src/NWCLARK/perl-5.8.2/pod/perldelta.pod
If you missed the Perl 5.8.1 announcement:
http://dev.perl
You can find much more about Perl at:
-- Nicholas Clark, on behalf of the Perl5 Porters 2003-11-05