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RE: 5.6.0 ready for prime-time?
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From:
David Grove
Date:
April 2, 2000 21:45
Subject:
RE: 5.6.0 ready for prime-time?
Message ID:
000001bf9d27$66de6700$e4f58bcd@petesplace.com
> What a convenient "[cut]". You managed to pull the lower paragraph
> entirely out of context. Your lack of integrity is appalling.
The two were related and nothing worth noting was in the middle. I don't
believe that it was out of context.
> The people on this mailing list feel many different ways about the
> OS-debate. Nothing of that enters into my opinion of your "advocacy", nor
> do I imagine it influences many others here. What decides me against you
> is your refusal to put forth evidence to back up your slanderous
> claims.
What do you want me to do? Mirror the perl5-porters mailing list to you?
You're obviously not reading it. Other people are giving the evidence, I'm
just commenting on them and pulling the comments together. Other than that,
I've only made one claim on my own, that Perl 5.6 is out of compatibility
with major CPAN modules. Evidence is simple:
1. Take a Win32 machine (I wouldn't risk my linux systems on this right
now). Follow the instructions, configure the make file, nmake. Ok, fine,
compiles.
2. Go to a module. perl Makefile.PL, nmake ...lots of compiler messages...
then boom, sorry, the module you have compiled is out of service at this
time.
3. Repeat with other modules. Some go in, but the most important ones fail.
I tried in total 20 modules, some went in, others failed with the same
errors. Win32 Perl is not Win32 Perl without LibWin32. Tk didn't go through
(no, Nick, that's not a slap), I don't remember the others.
Now, from other posts (oh, is it a surprise that I'm not the only one?), I'm
gathering that POLLUTE is a potential way around this. When setting up my
makefile, I basically skipped this section. This may have been my error,
I'll find out soon enough. The makefile had this big, horrid-sounding
message that if you turn this on all kinds of bad things can happen... so I
left it off and went on to the next configuration item. Even if, get that,
even if "perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1" solves the problem, 5.6.0 is still out
of sync with CPAN. If a watch runs out of sync with the other watches around
it, you take it to a watchmaker (unless it's a cheap watch). Why? BECAUSE
IT'S BROKEN!
Duuuuh.
Maybe there's a way around it, maybe there isn't. I have yet to try out
Nick's fix for the problem. If it doesn't, then it's _really_ broken. If it
does, then perhaps these symbol changes should have had a patchlevel to
catch up. Or maybe in the makefile, rather than a barely descriptive horror
story, something like "a significant number of CPAN modules will not compile
without this, this, and this." Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe...
I'll see when I have time to trudge through it again.
It doesn't make any difference at this point. What does make a difference is
whether we learned from it or not. You (we) can't put out a release that
breaks a significant number of libraries... at the very least not without
stern and obvious warnings about them. This is virtually something that
needs a big red flashing light. A few little mentions don't cut it.
> Your kind of "advocacy" is something we can do without.
We, as in unix-perl bigots? Again, I don't believe that the porters
appreciate being put into this generalization. They have specifically told
me so.
We, as in the members of the unix-perl community who doesn't want Win32 perl
to advance in any way shape or form? I prefer linux too. I'm just not
arrogant enough to deny Win32 users the respect they deserve as members of
our eclectic community, though rank newbie many may be.
We, and yes I believe I speak for the majority of this forum, would very
much like to close this thread and move on to fixing this problem, or
figuring out how to deal with it. This is going to be very confusing to
users.
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