[PATCH] doc: technical/whyperl: update w/ (good) news from PSC

[PATCH] doc: technical/whyperl: update w/ (good) news from PSC

[Eric Wong]

It looks like stability and compatibility will prevail, after all.
---
 Documentation/technical/whyperl.txt | 8 +++++---
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/technical/whyperl.txt b/Documentation/technical/whyperl.txt
index de6f912a..fbe2e1b1 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/whyperl.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/whyperl.txt
@@ -66,9 +66,11 @@ Good Things
   Perl had fewer breaking changes than Python or Ruby; we
   expect that trend to continue given the inertia of Perl 5.
 
-  Note: this document was written before the Perl 7 announcement.
-  We'll continue to monitor and adapt to the situation around
-  what distros are doing in regard to maintaining compatibility.
+  As of April 2021, the Perl Steering Committee has confirmed
+  Perl 7 will require `use v7.0' and existing code should
+  continue working unchanged:
+  https://nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/259789
+  <CAMvkq_SyTKZD=1=mHXwyzVYYDQb8Go0N0TuE5ZATYe_M4BCm-g@mail.gmail.com>
 
 * Built for text processing
 

upcoming perl v5.12 requirement...

[Eric Wong]

On a side note, I'm strongly considering moving to Perl 5.12
after public-inbox 1.7 is released.  perl 5.12.4 will be a
decade old in a few months (however 5.12.5 was Nov 2012).

It seems the various 5.12.x releases had fewer breaking bugfixes
than 5.10.0 => 5.10.1, so "use v5.12" should be fine.

The main reason I want 5.12 is it enables strict implicitly,
reducing syscalls and startup time:

  strace -c perl -Mstrict -e exit # 208 syscalls
  strace -c perl -Mv5.12 -e exit  # 186 syscalls

It also allows "delete local" and some other things, but
I'm not yet sure about the "unicode_strings" feature bit...

Re: upcoming perl v5.12 requirement...

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 03:44:35PM -0400, Eric Wong wrote:
> On a side note, I'm strongly considering moving to Perl 5.12
> after public-inbox 1.7 is released.  perl 5.12.4 will be a
> decade old in a few months (however 5.12.5 was Nov 2012).

As long as we can set the low bar at 5.16, I'm good with that. Lore will
eventually roll onto newer platforms than CentOS7, but there's still a lot of
yak left to shave before that happens. :)

-K

Re: upcoming perl v5.12 requirement...

[Eric Wong]

Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 03:44:35PM -0400, Eric Wong wrote:
> > On a side note, I'm strongly considering moving to Perl 5.12
> > after public-inbox 1.7 is released.  perl 5.12.4 will be a
> > decade old in a few months (however 5.12.5 was Nov 2012).
> 
> As long as we can set the low bar at 5.16, I'm good with that. Lore will
> eventually roll onto newer platforms than CentOS7, but there's still a lot of
> yak left to shave before that happens. :)

No problem.  The Perl requirement will crawl forward as slowly as
enterprise/LTS distros go.  I have no plans to skip 5.14, either
(haven't started looking at perl514*delta, and won't until we're
on 5.12).

Re: upcoming perl v5.12 requirement...

[Eric Wong]

Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> On a side note, I'm strongly considering moving to Perl 5.12
> after public-inbox 1.7 is released.  perl 5.12.4 will be a
> decade old in a few months (however 5.12.5 was Nov 2012).
> 
> It seems the various 5.12.x releases had fewer breaking bugfixes
> than 5.10.0 => 5.10.1, so "use v5.12" should be fine.
> 
> The main reason I want 5.12 is it enables strict implicitly,
> reducing syscalls and startup time:
> 
>   strace -c perl -Mstrict -e exit # 208 syscalls
>   strace -c perl -Mv5.12 -e exit  # 186 syscalls

Unfortunately, that makes no difference for anything which uses
modules in the Perl stdlib or any 3rd-party modules.  Even if we
relied on v5.12 for strict, all external dependencies we load
"use strict" and they remain Perl 5.8 (if not 5.6) compliant.

> It also allows "delete local" and some other things, but

That's nice, as is //a for ASCII-only matches.

> I'm not yet sure about the "unicode_strings" feature bit...

This requires much care on our part, unfortunately.

Re: upcoming perl v5.12 requirement...

[Eric Wong]

Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> That's nice, as is //a for ASCII-only matches.

No, //a is actually Perl 5.14+

> > I'm not yet sure about the "unicode_strings" feature bit...
> 
> This requires much care on our part, unfortunately.

Yeah, unicode_strings is why I won't bother switching existing
<= 5.10.1 codebases to 5.12+.  Way too many gotchas and
potential bugs with that.