Subject: 5.005 released (with maintenance update 01)
From: Gurusamy Sarathy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:47:12 -0400 (EDT)
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 COMPATIBILE 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 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 <[email-masked]>.

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 <[email-masked]>.  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