Revision as of 13:15, 12 July 2012

Perl 5.16

Summary

Perl 5.16 brings a lot of changes. Details about them can be found in 5.16.0 perldelta document.

Owner

Name: Petr Písař
Email: <ppisar@redhat.com>

Name: Jitka Plesníková
Email: <jplesnik@redhat.com>

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 18
Last updated: 2012-07-12
Percentage of completion: 95 %

Completed items

Get dedicated build-root from rel-engs (f18-perl)
Define perl_bootstrap in perl-srpm-macros
Build new perl 5.16 keeping old COMPAT Provides
Rebuild packages needed for minimal build-root
Rebuild dual-lived packages (otherwise yum recommends --skip-broken and fails)
Rebuild packages needed for building source packages from git repository
Remove old perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.14.*) from perl
Undefine perl_bootstrap
Rebuild packages having perl_bootstrap condition in spec file again
Synchronize packages upgraded in f18 build root
Merge dedicated build-root to rawhide and remove the dedicated one by rel-engs

Items in progress

Rebuild other packages: Use Fedora::Rebuild dependency solver or ordered sets computed by Paul
Rebuilt Perl packages: 2102 of 2116 done (99.34 %)

Items still to be done

gpsdrive – build-time dependencies conflict, bug #839604
libprelude – compilation fails bug #839602
libpreludedb – compilation fails bug #839607
mapserver – does not compile, bug #839627
openscap – does not compile, bug #839610
perl-Class-InsideOut – tests fail, bug #839600
perl-eperl – does not compile with perl 5.16.0, bug #839609
perl-Hardware-Verilog-Parser – does not compile, bug #839599
perl-Hardware-Vhdl-Parser – a test fails, bug #839618
perl-PDL – failed due to missing projects.h. It is not provided by latest proj-devel. New version exists which should fix it, but it doesn't. Upstream bug.
perl-PDL-Graphics-PLplot – requires broken perl-PDL
perl-Unix-Statgrab – a test fails, bug #839612
xchat-gnome – fails to link, bug #839623
zoneminder – does not compile, bug #839613

Detailed Description

Perl releases will be now every year and updates during year will be containing mainly bug fixes. The release 5.16.0 should be stable release, but 5.16.1 should contain bugfixes for issues introduced in 5.16.0.

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora as bleeding edge distribution should be shipping new release of perl as one of the first distributions.

Scope

Every Perl package will be rebuilt in testing build root f18-perl against perl 5.16.0 and then if no major problem emerges the packages will be merged back to f18 build root.

How to Test

Download packages from koji buildroot f18-perl or try building or using your packages with requirements related to perl.

User Experience

Dependencies

repoquery --whatrequires --alldeps 'perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.1?.?)' | sort -u

Contingency Plan

Revert changes in perl git master branch before 5.16 upgrade commit and drop f18-perl koji build-root.

Documentation

changes between 5.14.0 and 5.16.x http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.16.0/pod/perldelta.pod
packaging guidelines http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Perl
how to update modules and dual-lived modules: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Perl/updates
new macros from rpm with different filter http://rpm.org/wiki/PackagerDocs/DependencyGenerator
external generator of dependencies (outside of rpm) perl.{prov,req}

Release Notes

New Features

Unicode 6.1
More consistent eval controlled with unicode_eval and evalbytes feature
2- and 3-argument substr called in left-value context is evaluted even after changing original string
New T_*REF_REFCOUNT_FIXED XS typemap fixing reference counter decremetion
New is_utf8_char_buf XS-callable function replaces broken is_utf8_char function
$$ variable is writable
Improved debugger: tracing mode can be restricted to certain level, breakpoints can be disabled temporarily, breakpoints can be set by file name
sort subroutines can be autoloaded
$[ variable is provided by arybase module
mmaped PerlIO layer is now a separate module PerlIO::mmap

Deprecated Features

Accessing Unicode database files directly is deprecated now; use Unicode::UCD instead
Version::Requirements is deprecated in favor of CPAN::Meta::Requirements

Incompatible Changes

Special blocks (e.g. BEGIN) are called in void context
Unoverloaded stringification of regular expression does not return the expression literal
T_DATAUNIT and T_CALLBACK XS typemaps removed
User defined case-changing has been removed in favor of Unicode::Casing
XSUB C functions are static now and they are not exported from their object files
Read-only references cannot be weaken
$$, $<, $>, $(, and $) do not cache their value
Devel::DProf, Shell have been removed from Perl core
perl4 libraries removed: abbrev.pl, assert.pl, bigfloat.pl, bigint.pl, bigrat.pl, cacheout.pl, complete.pl, ctime.pl, dotsh.pl, exceptions.pl, fastcwd.pl, flush.pl, getcwd.pl, getopt.pl, getopts.pl, hostname.pl, importenv.pl, lib/find{,depth}.pl, look.pl, newgetopt.pl, open2.pl, open3.pl, pwd.pl, hellwords.pl, stat.pl, tainted.pl, termcap.pl, timelocal.pl

Comments and Discussion

See Talk:Features/perl5.16

@@ Line 31: / Line 31: @@
 === Items in progress ===
 * Rebuild other packages: Use Fedora::Rebuild dependency solver or ordered sets computed by Paul
-* Rebuilt Perl packages: 2101 of 2116 done (99.29 %)
+* Rebuilt Perl packages: 2102 of 2116 done (99.34 %)
 === Items still to be done ===
@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 * perl-PDL-Graphics-PLplot – requires broken perl-PDL
 * perl-Unix-Statgrab – a test fails, [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=839612 bug #839612]
-* pidgin – broken dependencies (sane-backends-drivers-cameras-1.0.22-10.fc18 is missing libgphoto2_port.so.0())
 * xchat-gnome – fails to link, [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=839623 bug #839623]
 * zoneminder – does not compile, [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=839613 bug #839613]

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