Path: usenet.cis.ufl.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!psgrain!nntp.teleport.com!usenet From: Roderick Schertler Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.lang.perl.misc Subject: Perl 5.002 is released Followup-To: comp.lang.perl.misc Date: 17 Mar 1996 00:50:24 GMT Organization: International Bonded Couriers/Miami Lines: 208 Approved: merlyn@stonehenge.com (comp.lang.perl.announce) Message-ID: <4ifnkg$noi@nadine.teleport.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: julie.teleport.com X-Disclaimer: The "Approved" header verifies header information for article transmission and does not imply approval of content. Xref: usenet.cis.ufl.edu comp.lang.perl.announce:298 comp.lang.perl.misc:24161 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Perl 5.002 is released. (It was actually released on February 29th, but we had a little mixup about getting the word out.) Read the INSTALL file before installing the software! It will answer most of your questions. If you still have problems after following the advice therein read the hints file for your OS (if there is one). The hints files are in the hints subdirectory of the source tree. If that doesn't help contact the Perl5 Porters by sending mail to perl5-porters@nicoh.com. Among the differences between this release and 5.001m are: - Lots and lots of bugs were fixed. Doubtless new bugs were introduced, but with any luck the bug population took a big net hit. - The biggest new feature in the Perl core with this release is that of subroutine prototypes. See the perlsub(1) man page for details. - The documentation has been greatly expanded and enhanced, both for the core and for the standard libraries. 5.002 contains about twice as much documentation as 5.001m had. All of the standard libraries have man pages now. - A couple of new functions were added to the core (tied() and sysopen()). - Some new command line switches are supported by the perl binary (-h, -m, -M, -V, -V:name and the :debugger part of -d:debugger), see perlrun(1). - A number of new standard modules were added, including Devel::SelfStubber DirHandle File::Copy FileCache Pod::Text Safe SelectSaver SelfLoader Symbol Text::Wrap Tie::Scalar diagnostics overload vars See the individual man pages for details. - A number of modules were greatly enhanced. (The FileHandle module is definitely worth revisiting.) - Some modules were renamed. is now ------ TieHash Tie::Hash SubstrHash Tie::SubstrHash (We meant to leave stubs in place of the old names for these (explaining where they went), but that slipped through the cracks.) - The standard @INC path has been restructured a bit. The architecture-dependant directory is now named after the version of Perl it's meant to work with (/usr/local/lib/perl5/$arch/5.002, eg). An additional architecture-dependant directory has been added under site_perl (/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$arch). Locally installed modules now install into site_perl by default. - A new standard sub-version number has been added so we can circumvent "official unofficial" release numbers in the future, beloved though they were. Subversions will be numbered like 5.002_01; `require 5.002_01' works as you'd expect (failing for 5.002, succeeding for 5.002_01, 5.002_23 and 5.003). - Signal handlers installed via %SIG are now installed using sigaction() on all platforms which support it. Availability for non-Unix platforms: - VMS: The standard distribution contains support for VMS, but due to a last-minute glitch you can't use 5.002 as distributed. Sorry about that. The 5.002_01 development release (coming soon) will support VMS. It will be found on CPAN in the src/5.0/unsupported directory. - OS/2: 5.002 builds on OS/2. Read the files in the os2/ directory of the distribution. - Windows 95 and Windows NT: The most current version of Perl for your system is still based on 5.001m, unfortunately. See http://www.perl.hip.com for more info. - Mac, DOS, Windows 3.1 and Amiga: Perl 5.002 isn't available for any of these platforms yet. Watch comp.lang.perl.announce for availability. The 5.002 distribution file is 1544222 bytes big. The MD5 hash of it is MD5(perl5.002.tar.gz): 2c76296aee35a98451110d3d985cae65 . You can download it from http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0/perl5.002.tar.gz , this will actually connect you to a CPAN site near you (for some definition of near) (Thanks, Tom!). If you want to do it the old fashioned way it's in the file src/5.0/perl5.002.tar.gz at all the CPAN sites. (CPAN is the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.) The currently registered CPAN sites are Africa South Africa ftp://ftp.is.co.za/programming/perl/CPAN/ Asia Japan ftp://ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp/lang/perl/CPAN/ Taiwan ftp://dongpo.math.ncu.edu.tw/perl/CPAN/ Australasia Australia ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/ ftp://ftp.mame.mu.oz.au/pub/perl/CPAN/ New Zealand ftp://ftp.tekotago.ac.nz/pub/perl/CPAN/ Canada British Columbia ftp://mango.pinc.com/pub/mirrors/CPAN/ Europe Austria ftp://ftp.tuwien.ac.at/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ Czech Republic ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ Denmark ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ Finland ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/ France ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/ ftp://ftp.pasteur.fr/pub/computing/unix/perl/CPAN/ Germany ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/programming/languages/perl/CPAN/ ftp://ftp.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/CPAN/ Greece ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/lang/perl/ Poland ftp://ftp.pk.edu.pl/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/ Portugal ftp://ftp.ci.uminho.pt/pub/lang/perl/ Slovenia ftp://ftp.arnes.si/software/perl/CPAN/ Spain ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/CPAN/ Sweden ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/ Switzerland ftp://ftp.switch.ch/mirror/CPAN/ the Netherlands ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/ UK ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/perl/CPAN/ ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/perl-CPAN/ USA California ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/perl/CPAN/ Florida ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/ Illinois ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/ Massachusetts ftp://ftp.delphi.com/pub/mirrors/packages/perl/CPAN/ Oklahoma ftp://ftp.uoknor.edu/mirrors/CPAN/ Texas ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perl/ ftp://ftp.sedl.org/pub/mirrors/CPAN/ ftp://ftp.sterling.com/CPAN/ A note about the next release: 5.002_01 and above will enable EMBED by default. This will break binary compatibility with 5.001m and 5.002. This means that when you install 5.002_01 you'll have to recompile all your locally installed dynamically loadable modules. We're going to try to make that the last time that recompiling modules will be necessary for a while. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMUsaeGqjpuDLfiIJAQGlNwP/T60zEEuhf7PkDdu0y4PWdFOtIpWXEtfp qzK7zkS/0WBnKrfJYH4qYSjgtngtaeXg6D0xIhan9p4sVge5h2mUg1so9ndeZQN1 DQz4G3IEJtGXoTnpRIwJS+jwejia6Hmw5YTIE7aTQwG3B8f3JQHKcyjZ2ZDZKy7+ VJ2njAemb+c= =vSn0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Roderick Schertler roderick@gate.net