Wither 5.4? (was Re: Tapping CPAN testers)

[Michael G Schwern]

Gabor Szabo wrote:
> On 9/18/07, Michael G Schwern <schwern at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Considerations:
>>
>> 1)  We use qr// a lot and I'm afraid of what the regexes will look like
>> without it.  And then there's the possible performance hit. [1]
>>
>> 2)  Test::Harness not supporting 5.004 effectively end-of-life's 5.4.
>>
>> #2 is a big consideration.  OTOH MakeMaker doesn't support anymore 5.4 either
>> and I've probably let 5.5isms slip into Test::More so it's effectively already
>> done.
> 
> Do we really need to take care of this?

Not unless the Perl Survey reveals some huge community of 5.4 users hidden
somehwhere, no.  Just laying out the consequences.  Feel free to skip the rest
of this.


> Will people using 5.004 ever attempt to use the latest and greatest of
> Test::Harness?

Test::More needs an upgraded Test::Harness, so someone doing an automatic
install Test::More on a fresh 5.4 install will get the latest and greatest.

Of course, the only people who install fresh 5.4 installs are masochistic CPAN
testers.  Anyone still using 5.4 in the real world has long since dealt with
this problem.


> I don't think we should be seeing this as "end-of-life".

"End-of-life" means the vendors are no longer providing support and new
versions, which we're not.


> So users of 5.4 won't be able to upgrade Test::Harness. Then what?

Not being able to upgrade part of the module installation toolchain means as
more and more modules rely on new features of the toolchain they will no
longer being able to install modules.  This leads to a dependency failure
cascade knocking out large chunks of CPAN.  For example, folks already need to
upgrade to Test::Harness 2 for no_plan and TODO test support.

MakeMaker already does not support 5.4, and I doubt either does Module::Build.
 I'm considering pulling Test::More's 5.4 support next time I happen to break
it.  So it's de-facto already happened.



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