Perl 5.005 Release Announcement

Subject:	5.005 released (with maintenance update 01)
From:	Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@engin.umich.edu>
Newsgroups:	comp.lang.perl.moderated,comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc

The Perl Porters proudly present a shiny new release of Perl, version 5.005. This is a major release that incorporates all maintenance and development changes since the last major release, 5.004.

This major release is not to be confused with maintenance releases of 5.004. A new maintenance release of 5.004 (5.004_05) is in fact in final beta test stages now and should be released within a few weeks.

WARNING: Version 5.005 is NOT BINARY COMPATIBLE with previous releases. You will need to recompile all extensions that require a C compiler to build (i.e. those that contain XSUBs). A brief summary of the more significant changes is included at the end.

There has been one maintenance update since the time 5.005 was released, to fix a few platform-specific problems. You can find the 5.005_01 release from any of the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) sites worldwide. To select from a list of sites, go to:

    http://www.perl.com/CPAN

Note the absence of a trailing `/'. The actual file can be found at:

    http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GSAR/perl5.005_01.tar.gz

Perl builds and runs on a bewildering number of platforms. Virtually all known and current Unix derivatives are supported, as are VMS, DOS, OS/2, Windows, QNX, BeOS, and the Amiga. There are also the beginnings of support for MPE/iX. If you find that your platform is unsupported, do let us know.

Be sure to read the INSTALL document for Unix-like platforms, and the port-specific README.xxx files for others. For brief notes on what has changed, see pod/perldelta.pod. More specific logs logs can be found in the Changes file.

If everything went well, and all the tests passed, make ok will mail us a report of your build configuration. If not, run make nok and describe your problems in detail. Those two make targets run the perlbug utility, located at utils/perlbug. If perlbug cannot determine how to send mail from your system, you may have to let it save the report to a file, and mail it to us at <perlbug@perl.com>.

Being the lazy bunch we are, we have gone and written perlbug in Perl, so if you are unable to build Perl at all, we apologize. Please include the _output_ of the ./myconfig shell script with a detailed summary of what went wrong, and send it to <perlbug@perl.com>. If Perl built fine, but you have been unable to install it, perlbug can also be run as

    ./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug

The -h option will show a short usage summary.

If after having successfully installed Perl, you find any bugs or incompatibilities that aren't already mentioned in the documentation, please use perlbug to report the problem.

Once again, be sure to read the README.xxx, INSTALL, and pod/perldelta.pod files for important information about this release.

And, in the words of Larry Wall: "Have the appropriate amount of fun."

--The Perl Porters

Brief Summary of Changes

For a more detailed list, see pod/perldelta.pod in the source distribution. Note that this release is NOT BINARY COMPATIBLE with earlier releases. You'll need to recompile all XS extensions.

Several exciting new features. Most of these are experimental. See below.
Sources are now ANSI C. A conforming compiler is required to build Perl and extensions.
Perl's global variables now have a "PL_" prefix to minimize collisions with libraries and applications that may embed Perl.
Much revamped regular expression engine.
Improved support for multiple interpreters.
Vastly improved support for the Win32 platform.
Support for more platforms. (BeOS, DOS, MPE/ix.)
Several memory leaks have been fixed.
More efficient, internal implementation of sort().
Tied arrays and handles are now fully supported.
Improved malloc().
Internals are now more reliable against unforeseen stack reallocs.
EXPR foreach EXPR syntax is supported.
Several more optimizations implemented.
Many security fixes.
More generous treatment of literal carriage returns in Perl source.
Better locale support.
Several modules and pragmata have been added. (B, Data::Dumper, Errno, File::Spec, ExtUtils::Packlist, Fatal, IPC::SysV, attrs, fields, re.)
Newer versions of most existing modules.
Many additional diagnostics, some withdrawn.

The following features are almost all new, and are considered experimental. Their implementation and interface are subject to change in future versions.

OS-level perl threads.
A suite of compiler modules with various backends, for producing C or bytecode from Perl, and for various useful diagnostics.
C++ Perl Object abstraction supported on Win32.
Precompiled regular expressions.
Pseudo-hashes (manipulate arrays using hash syntax).
Enhanced 64-bit support.
Reliable signals, when threading is enabled.
Extended support for exception handling.
EGCS/GCC compilers are now supported on Win32.

Tested Platforms

This release is known to build and pass all tests (with some noted exceptions) on the following platforms:


ARCHNAME            OSVER   CC              REMARKS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
alpha-dec_osf       4.0     cc
alpha-dec_osf-threa 4.0     cc
aix                 4.1.4.0 cc
aix                 4.1.5.0 cc
dos-djgpp           DOS     gcc 2.8.1       posix.t#4 fails
IP22-irix           5       cc
IP22-irix           6.2     cc -n32
IP22-irix           6.2     cc -n32 -mips3
IP27-irix           6.4     cc -n32
IP28-irix           6.2     cc -n32
IP32-irix           6.3     gcc 2.8.1
i386-bsdos          3.1     shlicc2 2.7.2.1
i386-bsdos-thread   3.1     shlicc2 2.7.2.1
i386-freebsd        2.2.6   gcc 2.7.2.1
i386-svr4,unixware  7.0.0   cc
i386-svr4,unixware  2.1.2   cc
i386-svr4,unixware  2.1     cc
i586-linux          2.0.33  gcc 2.7.2
i686-linux          2.0.34  gcc 2.7.2.1     shared libperl
i686-linux          2.0.32  gcc 2.8.1
i686-linux          2.0.34  gcc 2.7.2.3
i686-linux-thread   2.0.32  gcc 2.8.1
i686-linux-thread   2.0.34  gcc 2.7.2.3
i686-linux-thread   2.1.110 egcs 1.0.2
i86pc-solaris       2.7     cc
i86pc-solaris       2.6     gcc 2.7.2.3.f.1
i86pc-solaris-threa 2.6     gcc 2.7.2.3.f.1
MSWin32-x86         NT4.0   Visual C 5.0    posix.t#2 fails sometimes
MSWin32-x86-thread  NT4.0   Visual C 5.0    posix.t#2 fails sometimes
MSWin32-x86-object  NT4.0   Visual C 5.0    posix.t#2 fails sometimes
MSWin32-x86         NT4.0   Borland C 5.02
MSWin32-x86-thread  NT4.0   Borland C 5.02
MSWin32-x86-object  NT4.0   Borland C 5.02
MSWin32-x86         NT4.0   egcs 1.0.2      posix.t#2 fails sometimes
MSWin32-x86-thread  NT4.0   egcs 1.0.2      posix.t#2 fails sometimes
ppc-linux           2.1.24  egcs 1.0.3
ppc-linux-thread    2.1.24  egcs 1.0.3
powerpc-machten     4.1     gcc 2.7.2.2
PA-RISC1.1          10.20   cc
PA-RISC2.0          11.00   cc
sparc-linux-thread  2.0.33  egcs 1.0.2      shared libperl
sun4-solaris        2.6     cc
sun4-solaris        2.6     gcc 2.7.2.3
sun4-solaris-thread 2.6     gcc 2.8.0
sun4-solaris-thread 2.6     cc
sun4-solaris-thread 2.6     gcc 2.7.2.3
sun4-solaris        2.5.1   cc
sun4-solaris        2.5.1   gcc 2.8.1
sun4-solaris-thread 2.5.1   cc
sun4-solaris-thread 2.5.1   gcc 2.7.2.2
sun4-solaris-thread 2.5.1   gcc 2.8.1
sun4-solaris        2.4     cc
sun4-solaris        2.4     gcc 2.7.2
sun4-solaris        2.3     cc
sun4-sunos          4.1.4   egcs 1.0.3
sun4-sunos          4.1.3u1 gcc 2.8.0
sun4-sunos          4.1.1   gcc 2.7.2
VMS_AXP             V7.1    CC/DECC
VMS_AXP-thread      V7.1    CC/DECC
VMS_AXP             V6.2    CC/DECC
x86-qnx             424     cc