[RFC] start depending on Perl 5.10.1+

[RFC] start depending on Perl 5.10.1+

[Eric Wong]

I mainly want to start using the '//' (defined-or) operator to
simplify code, and Perl 5.10.1 is roughly a decade old at this
point.

"given/when" would've be nice, but it's future is in doubt AFAIK.

I also started using the 'parent' module in WwwHighlight, and
'autodie' in UserContent.pm, both of which were only distributed
with Perl since 5.10.1; and testing with ancient
versions/distros is time-consuming.

Anyways, I think this a small-enough jump to not break any
existing installations, given we already depend on fairly
recent versions of git and Xapian.

Maybe we can use more newish Perl features in the future...
---
 INSTALL                | 2 +-
 lib/PublicInbox/WWW.pm | 2 +-
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index 9470d83..b22d848 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ public-inbox requires a number of other packages to access its full
 functionality.  The core tools are, of course:
 
 * Git (1.8.0+, 2.6+ for writing v2 repositories)
-* Perl 5.8+
+* Perl 5.10.1+
 * SQLite (needed for Xapian use)
 
 To accept incoming mail into a public inbox, you'll likely want:
diff --git a/lib/PublicInbox/WWW.pm b/lib/PublicInbox/WWW.pm
index 6e69001..268c5b8 100644
--- a/lib/PublicInbox/WWW.pm
+++ b/lib/PublicInbox/WWW.pm
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
 # - Must not rely on static content
 # - UTF-8 is only for user-content, 7-bit US-ASCII for us
 package PublicInbox::WWW;
-use 5.008;
+use 5.010_001;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use bytes (); # only for bytes::length
-- 
EW

Re: [RFC] start depending on Perl 5.10.1+

[Eric Wong]

The one minor, (and likely irrelevant) downside to this change
would be any of code which relies on the 'fields' pragma for
pseudo-hash performance benefits is out-of-luck since
pseudo-hashes were removed in Perl 5.9.

Our only use of the 'fields' pragma is from Danga::Socket
(and descendent) classes.  Fwiw, I have never used Perl 5.8 on
public-inbox myself, either.

Re: [RFC] start depending on Perl 5.10.1+

[Eric Wong]

Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> The one minor, (and likely irrelevant) downside to this change
> would be any of code which relies on the 'fields' pragma for
> pseudo-hash performance benefits is out-of-luck since
> pseudo-hashes were removed in Perl 5.9.
> 
> Our only use of the 'fields' pragma is from Danga::Socket
> (and descendent) classes.  Fwiw, I have never used Perl 5.8 on
> public-inbox myself, either.

Even testing "maint-5.10" or "v5.10.1" from perl.git is proving
challenging.  Changes in the toolchain, cflags missing, Errno.pm
not generated correctly, and some math differences.  The usual
stuff that comes from abandoned branches a reasonably up-to-date
OS (Debian stable).  I wonder if I might have better luck on
CentOS 6 or 7.

At least v5.30.0 and blead seem alright