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Postings from July 2003
Re: Perl for Panther
From:
Edward Moy
Date:
July 1, 2003 13:57
Subject:
Re: Perl for Panther
Message ID:
E38E7201-ABF3-11D7-83BD-000A2789A72A@apple.com
Thanks, Rich. I got so busy at the Apple WorldWide Developers
Conference, and then behind in my regular work that I just never got
around to sending this out.
We wanted to share this information about Perl and the future 10.3
(Panther) release of Mac OS X, so users and developers would not be
taken by surprise about the incompatibility issues that they are likely
to see. We hope the new features and capabilities of the new Perl will
outweigh the temporary difficulties that will occur.
Edward Moy
Apple
On Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 10:04 AM, Rich Morin wrote:
> --- Begin Forward ---
>
>> Cc: Omni List <macosx-talk@omnigroup.com>
>> From: Edward Moy <emoy@apple.com>
>> Subject: Re: Perl for Panther
>> To: John Adams <jadams01@sprynet.com>
>> Sender: macosx-talk-admin@omnigroup.com
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>> X-Original-Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:21:49 -0700
>> Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:21:49 -0700
>>
>> On Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at 5:41PM, John Adams wrote:
>>
>> Has anyone heard what version of Perl we should expect with
>> Panther--5.6.0 again, 5.6.1, 5.8.0, 5.8.1 (imminent)?
>>
>> For the record, there is a release note included with the WWDC
>> version of Panther, which I include here.
>>
>> Edward Moy
>> Apple
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> PATH Documentation >Release Notes
>>
>>
>> Mac OS X 10.3.x Developer Release Notes:
>> Perl 5.8.1 Release Notes
>>
>> Mac OS X 10.3 will ship with version 5.8.1 of Perl, which will have
>> many new and improved features.
>>
>> The highlights of the 5.8 series include:
>>
>> * Better Unicode support
>> * New IO Implementation
>> * New Thread Implementation
>> * Better Numeric Accuracy
>> * Safe Signals
>> * Many New Modules
>>
>> However, for Perl extensions (XS modules), the 5.8 series is not
>> binary-compatible with earlier releases on Perl, including the 5.6
>> version that shipped on previous releases of Mac OS X. This means
>> that developers will have to recompile their Perl extensions to use
>> them in Mac OS X 10.3.
>>
>> With the 5.8.1 version, the standard distribution of Perl for Mac OS
>> X makes the following changes:
>>
>> * Versioning - the Perl release will be installed in a 5.8.1
>> sub-directory of /System/Library/Perl and /Library/Perl . This
>> allows multiple versions of Perl to be run on a user's system
>> without conflict.
>> * Two-level namespace support - Perl extensions will be compiled
>> automatically with two-level namespace support, greatly alleviating
>> the problem of duplicate symbols.
>> * The Mac OS X version of Perl will also have the new ithreads
>> support turned on, so Perl programs can be multithreaded.
>>
>> These changes in 5.8.1 will make it binary incompatible with not
>> only previous versions of Perl, but even with the same version not
>> built with this same set of features. For example, the ithread
>> support alone changes the internal workings of Perl so that
>> extensions are incompatible.
>>
>> To ameliorate these binary incompatibilities, the 5.8 series
>> implements different names for the architecture-dependent directory
>> depending on the compiled features. So instead of the familiar
>> darwin directory, the new architecture-dependent directory for the
>> Mac OS X release will be darwin-thread-multi-2level .
>>
>> The breaking of binary compatibility for 5.8.1 was unavoidable, but
>> once made, Apple does not intend to change this any further in the
>> 10.3 timeframe. Developers with prerelease versions of 10.3 may
>> begin to recompile their extensions with assurance that the binary
>> compatibility will not change when 10.3 is shipped.
>>
>> One final word about compatibility. The two-level namespace support
>> uses a feature only available in 10.3. That means Perl extensions
>> built under 10.3 can never be made to run under previous versions of
>> Mac OS X. Perl extensions that need to run under both 10.3 and
>> previous releases will need to have separate versions.
>>
>> Copyright © 2003 Apple Computer, Inc.
>
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