On Dec 12, 2007 8:12 AM, jeff pang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- "Chas. Owens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The only reason to use any version earlier than 5.6.3 > > is > > that your sysadmins won't upgrade an ancient box (and even then it > > is > > time to quit that job because if they are that stupid then there > > are > > probably other issues as well). > > > > mhh? if so, you'd better suggest the CPAN test project and all the > testors don't use perl version older than 5.6. Go ahead to do that > guy! > AFAIK, there are still lots of OSes on internet running Perl older > than 5.6, for example, we have some solaris hosts run that. snip
No, testing for compatibility with old versions of Perl that may still be in use is a good idea (so the diehards know which modules they can safely use), but teaching people to use old versions of Perl or cripple their code is not. There is still a significant number of people using Perl 4 (they are crazy, but what can you do) as well. Even Sun is using Perl 5.8.4* and has been using a version greater than 5.6 for a while. Sometime around 2003/2004 the big UNIX companies (IBM, Sun, HP, etc.) realized that they needed to support F/OSS directly (instead of the admins spending tons of time compiling and installing it themselves). Most likely it was the pressure the various Linux distributions were putting on them. Think about it this way, the modules you are writing are not part of Core Perl, and even if they were, they can't magically show up in an old version of Perl. So these people already have to download, build, and install your modules. Why would they be willing to do that, but not to download, compile, and install a new version of Perl into /opt or /usr/local (they might need the old version of Perl left in /usr/bin for compatibility reasons)? *from http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5947/6n80cmc78?a=view Perl Version 5.6.1 Perl version 5.6.1 might not be supported in a future Solaris OS release. Perl version 5.8.4, the default version in the Solaris 10 OS, is not binary compatible with Perl version 5.6.1. However, the earlier version is still retained in this Solaris release. Customized modules that are installed by the customer must be rebuilt and reinstalled to use Perl version 5.8.4. Modify any scripts that require the use of version 5.6.1 to specifically use version 5.6.1 of the interpreter instead of version 5.8.4. The interpreters of the respective Perl versions are located in the following directories: Perl 5.6.1 /usr/perl5/5.6.1/bin/perl Perl 5.8.4 /bin/perl, /usr/bin/perl, or /usr/perl5/bin/perl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://learn.perl.org/
