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-rw-r--r--AUTHORS12
-rw-r--r--Changes70
-rw-r--r--INSTALL4
-rwxr-xr-xMANIFEST1
-rw-r--r--README.cygwin1
5 files changed, 79 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index 36edd45e0f..d25c432c7a 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -1,11 +1,11 @@
# To give due honour to those who have made Perl 5 what it is today,
# here are easily-from-changelogs-extractable people and their
-# (hopefully) current and preferred email addresses (as of 2002, if known)
-# from the Changes files. These people have either submitted
-# patches or suggestions, or their bug reports or comments have inspired
-# the appropriate patches. Corrections, additions, deletions welcome;
-# send them to perl5-porters@perl.org, preferably as the output of diff(1),
-# diff -u or diff -c between the original and a corrected version of this file.
+# (hopefully) current and preferred email addresses from the commits.
+# These people have either submitted patches or suggestions, or their bug
+# reports or comments have inspired the appropriate patches. Corrections,
+# additions, deletions welcome; send them to perl5-porters@perl.org,
+# preferably as the output of diff(1), diff -u or diff -c between the
+# original and a corrected version of this file.
#
# The use of this database for anything else than Perl development
# is strictly forbidden. (Passive distribution with the Perl source
diff --git a/Changes b/Changes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..0ffddf6996
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Changes
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+For an overview of what's changed in this release, see pod/perldelta.pod.
+
+For the details of changes in previous releases, see the individual
+perlNNNdelta.pod files. For example, pod/perl588delta.pod describes the
+changes between versions 5.8.7 and 5.8.8.
+
+For a list of contributors to perl, see AUTHORS.
+
+If you need a detailed commit history (i.e. descriptions of each
+individual commit), you can view the git version control history online
+at http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git (follow the 'shortlog' link beside
+the relevant tag). Or, you can download a copy of the git repository and
+then run a command like
+
+ git log --name-status perl-5.10.0..perl-5.11.0
+
+to view all the changes between 5.10.0 and 5.11.0.
+
+See pod/perlrepository.pod for more details on using git and accessing the
+commit history.
+
+In perl releases prior to 2009, the source tarball included a collection
+of Changes files that listed the individual commits that had gone into
+each release. Since these files had become very large, and since the
+same information is now freely available online, it was decided to remove
+them from subsequent releases.
+
+If you need access to these removed files, then they can be be found most
+recently in the 5.8.9 and 5.10.0 tarballs, at
+
+ http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.8.9.tar.gz
+ http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.10.0.tar.gz
+
+The contents of the files in question can mostly be regenerated using git
+commands. The following table shows the equivalents. Note that the files
+prior to Changes5.005 were not simple lists of commits, so can't be
+recreated just by running the git command. As it happens, even the latter
+ones are not exact equivalents. This is due to a combination of errors in
+the original Changes files, and "impedance mismatches" when the previous
+version control data was imported into git in December 2008.
+
+For example, the Changes5.005 file includes 206 spurious entries from the
+maint5.004 Perforce branch.
+
+Running the following command with the range argument shown in the table
+will produce *approximately* the same list of changes in the specified
+file shown from the listed tarball.
+
+ git log --name-status <range>
+
+ file tarball <range> argument to 'git log'
+ ------------ ------ --------------------------------
+ Changes5.000 Either N/A
+ Changes5.001 Either perl-5.000..perl-5.001
+ Changes5.002 Either perl-5.001..perl-5.002
+ Changes5.003 Either perl-5.002..perl-5.003
+ Changes5.004 Either perl-5.003..perl-5.004
+ Changes5.005 Either perl-5.004..perl-5.005_03
+ Changes5.6 Either perl-5.005_03..perl-5.6.0
+ Changes5.8 Either perl-5.6.0..perl-5.8.0
+ Changes5.8.1 5.8.9 perl-5.8.0..perl-5.8.1 ^1ede746b
+ Changes5.8.2 5.8.9 perl-5.8.1..perl-5.8.2
+ Changes5.8.3 5.8.9 perl-5.8.2..perl-5.8.3
+ Changes5.8.4 5.8.9 perl-5.8.3..perl-5.8.4
+ Changes5.8.5 5.8.9 perl-5.8.4..perl-5.8.5 ^3a81978b
+ Changes5.8.6 5.8.9 perl-5.8.5..perl-5.8.6 ^498d59dd
+ Changes5.8.7 5.8.9 perl-5.8.6..perl-5.8.7
+ Changes5.8.8 5.8.9 perl-5.8.7..perl-5.8.8
+ Changes 5.8.9 perl-5.8.8..perl-5.8.9
+ Changes 5.10.0 perl-5.8.0..perl-5.10.0
diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index d8485758b4..004dccea6e 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -42,8 +42,8 @@ If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
For information on what's new in this release, see the
-pod/perl5110delta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
-changes, see the Changes file.
+pod/perl5110delta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
+specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
diff --git a/MANIFEST b/MANIFEST
index b7ace8c6e2..e824679ca8 100755
--- a/MANIFEST
+++ b/MANIFEST
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ beos/beosish.h BeOS port
beos/nm.c BeOS port
cc_runtime.h Macros need by runtime of compiler-generated code
cflags.SH A script that emits C compilation flags per file
+Changes Describe how to peruse changes between releases
config_h.SH Produces config.h
configpm Produces lib/Config.pm
Configure Portability tool
diff --git a/README.cygwin b/README.cygwin
index 14640c6784..1876f99a4a 100644
--- a/README.cygwin
+++ b/README.cygwin
@@ -558,7 +558,6 @@ be kept as clean as possible.
=item Documentation
INSTALL README.cygwin README.win32 MANIFEST
- Changes Changes5.004 Changes5.005 Changes5.6 Changes5.8
pod/perl.pod pod/perlport.pod pod/perlfaq3.pod
pod/perldelta.pod pod/perl5004delta.pod pod/perl56delta.pod
pod/perl561delta.pod pod/perl570delta.pod pod/perl572delta.pod