path: root/pod/perl5121delta.pod

=encoding utf8

=head1 NAME

perldelta - what is new for perl v5.12.1

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.12.0 release and
the 5.12.1 release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.10.1, first read
L<perl5120delta>, which describes differences between 5.10.1 and
5.12.0.

=head1 Notice

XXX Any important notices here

=head1 Incompatible Changes

There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.0 If any
exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.


=head1 Core Enhancements

Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no user-visible
changes to the core langauge in this release.

=head1 Modules and Pragmata

=head2 Pragmata Changes

=over 

=item *

We fixed exporting of C<version::is_strict> and C<version::is_lax>

These were being exported with a wrapper that treated them as method
calls, which causes them to fail.  They are just functions, are
documented as such, and should never be subclassed, so this patch
just exports them directly as functions without the wrapper.

=back

=head2 Updated Modules

=over 

=item *

We upgraded L<CGI.pm> to version 3.49 to incorporate fixes for regressions
introduced in the release we shipped with Perl 5.12.0.

=item *

We upgraded L<Pod::Simple> to version 3.14 to get an improvement to \C\<\< \>\>
parsing.

=back

=head1 Changes to Existing Documentation

=over

=item *

We added the new maintenance release policy to L<perlpolicy.pod>

=item *

We've clarified the multiple-angle-bracked construct in the spec for POD.

=item *

We added a missing explanation for a warning about C<:=> to L<perldiag.pod>

=item *

We removed a false claim that all text strings are Unicode strings in Perl.

=item *

GitHub's mirror is now at mirrors/perl, not github/perl

=item *

We fixed a a minor error in L<perl5114delta.pod>.

=item * 

We replaced a mention of the now-obsolete L<Switch.pm> with F<given>/F<when>.

=item *

We improved documentation about F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl>.

=item * 

We corrected L<perlmodlib.pod> which had unintentionally ommitted a number of modules.

=item * 

We updated the documentation for 'require' in L<perlfunc.pod> relating to putting Perl code in @INC.

=item *

We reinstated some erroneously-removed documentation about quotemeta.

=item *

We fixed an F<a2p> example in L<perlutil.pod>.

=item  *

We filled in a blank in L<perlport.pod> with the release date of Perl 5.12.

=item  *

We fixed broken links in a number of perldelta files.

=item * 

The documentation for L<Carp.pm> incorrectly stated that the $Carp::Verbose
variable makes cluck generate stack backtraces.

=item *

We fixed a number of typos in L<Pod::Functions>

=back

=head1 Testing

=head2 Testing Improvements

=over

=item *

F<t/op/sselect.t> is now less prone to clock jitter during timing checks
on Windows.

sleep() time on Win32 may be rounded down to multiple of
the clock tick interval.

=item *

F<lib/blib.t> and F<lib/locale.t>: Fixes for test failures on Darwin/PPC

=item *

F<perl5db.t>: Fix for test failures when C<Term::ReadLine::Gnu> is installed.

=back

=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements

XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
go here.

=head2 Configuration improvements

=over 

=item * 

We updated F<INSTALL> with notes aboute how to deal with broken F<dbm.h> on OpenSUSE (and possibly other platforms)

=back

=head1 Selected Bug Fixes

=over 4

=item *

A bug in how we process filetest operations could cause a segfault.
Filetest don't always expect an op on the stack, so we now use
TOPs only if we're sure that we're not stat'ing the _ filehandle.
This is indicated by OPf_KIDS (as checked in ck_ftst).

See also http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74542

=item *

When deparsing a nextstate op that has both a change of package (relative
to the previous nextstate) and a label, the package declaration is now
emitted first, because it is syntactically impermissible for a label to
prefix a package declaration.

=item * 

XSUB.h now correctly redefines fgets under PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS

See also http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55049


=item * 

utf8::is_utf8 now respects respect GMAGIC (e.g. $1)


=item * 

XS code using C<fputc()> or C<fputs()>: on Windows could cause an error due to their arguments being swapped.

See also: http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=72704

=back

=head1 Changed Internals

XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C<XS> code go here.

=over 4

=item *

commit bd94fa25a8ae3c7107bd1aec68d4488d21c79b05
Author: Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>
Date:   Mon Apr 19 15:35:59 2010 +0100

    Possible undefined behaviour, spotted by gcc 4.5.0 and HP's updated compiler.

XXX

=back

=head1 Platform Specific Notes

=head2 HP-UX

=over 

=item *

Perl now allows -Duse64bitint without promoting to use64bitall on HP-UX

=back

=head2 AIX

=over

=item * 

Perl now builds on AIX 4.2

The changes required work around AIX 4.2s' lack of support for IPv6,
and limited support for POSIX C<sigaction()>.

=back

=head2 FreeBSD 7

=over

=item * 

FreeBSD 7 no longer contains F</usr/bin/objformat>. At build time,
Perl now skips the F<objformat> check for versions 7 and higher and
assumes ELF.

=back

=head2 VMS

=over

=item *

It's now possible to build extensions on older (pre 7.3-2) VMS systems.

DCL symbol length was limited to 1K up until about seven years or
so ago, but there was no particularly deep reason to prevent those
older systems from configuring and building Perl.

=item *

We fixed the previously-broken C<-Uuseperlio> build on VMS.

We were checking a variable that doesn't exist in the non-default
case of disabling perlio.  Now we only look at it when it exists.

=item *

We fixed the -Uuseperlio command-line option in configure.com.

Formerly it only worked if you went through all the questions
interactively and explicitly answered no.

=back

=head1 Acknowledgements

XXX The list of people to thank goes here.


=head1 Reporting Bugs

If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .  There may also be
information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
program included with your release.  Be sure to trim your bug down
to a tiny but sufficient test case.  Your bug report, along with the
output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
analysed by the Perl porting team.

If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
distributed on CPAN.

=head1 SEE ALSO

The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
on what changed.

The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.

The F<README> file for general stuff.

The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.

=cut