perl582delta(1)

NAME

       perl582delta - what is new for perl v5.8.2

DESCRIPTION

       This document describes differences between the 5.8.1 release and the
       5.8.2 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.6.1, first read
       the perl58delta, which describes differences between 5.6.0 and 5.8.0,
       and the perl581delta, which describes differences between 5.8.0 and
       5.8.1.

Incompatible Changes

       For threaded builds for modules calling certain re-entrant system
       calls, binary compatibility was accidentally lost between 5.8.0 and
       5.8.1.  Binary compatibility with 5.8.0 has been restored in 5.8.2,
       which necessitates breaking compatibility with 5.8.1. We see this as
       the lesser of two evils.

       This will only affect people who have a threaded perl 5.8.1, and com-
       piled modules which use these calls, and now attempt to run the com-
       piled modules with 5.8.2. The fix is to re-compile and re-install the
       modules using 5.8.2.

Core Enhancements

       Hash Randomisation

       The hash randomisation introduced with 5.8.1 has been amended. It tran-
       spired that although the implementation introduced in 5.8.1 was source
       compatible with 5.8.0, it was not binary compatible in certain cases.
       5.8.2 contains an improved implementation which is both source and
       binary compatible with both 5.8.0 and 5.8.1, and remains robust against
       the form of attack which prompted the change for 5.8.1.

       We are grateful to the Debian project for their input in this area.
       See "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec for the original ratio-
       nale behind this change.

       Threading

       Several memory leaks associated with variables shared between threads
       have been fixed.

Modules and Pragmata

       Updated Modules And Pragmata

       The following modules and pragmata have been updated since Perl 5.8.1:

       Devel::PPPort
       Digest::MD5
       I18N::LangTags
       libnet
       MIME::Base64
       Pod::Perldoc
       strict
           Documentation improved

       Tie::Hash
           Documentation improved

       Time::HiRes
       Unicode::Collate
       Unicode::Normalize
       UNIVERSAL
           Documentation improved

Selected Bug Fixes

       Some syntax errors involving unrecognized filetest operators are now
       handled correctly by the parser.

Changed Internals

       Interpreter initialization is more complete when -DMULTIPLICITY is off.
       This should resolve problems with initializing and destroying the Perl
       interpreter more than once in a single process.

Platform Specific Problems

       Dynamic linker flags have been tweaked for Solaris and OS X, which
       should solve problems seen while building some XS modules.

       Bugs in OS/2 sockets and tmpfile have been fixed.

       In OS X "setreuid" and friends are troublesome - perl will now work
       around their problems as best possible.

Future Directions

       Starting with 5.8.3 we intend to make more frequent maintenance
       releases, with a smaller number of changes in each. The intent is to
       propagate bug fixes out to stable releases more rapidly and make
       upgrading stable releases less of an upheaval. This should give end
       users more flexibility in their choice of upgrade timing, and allow
       them easier assessment of the impact of upgrades. The current plan is
       for code freezes as follows

       o   5.8.3 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday December 31st 2003

       o   5.8.4 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday March 31st 2004

       o   5.8.5 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday June 30th 2004

       with the release following soon after, when testing is complete.

       See "Future Directions" in perl581delta for more soothsaying.

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://bugs.perl.org/.  There may also be information at
       http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.

       If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug pro-
       gram 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 "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by
       the Perl porting team.  You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
       http://bugs.perl.org/

SEE ALSO

       The Changes file for exhaustive details on what changed.

       The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.

       The README file for general stuff.

       The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.

perl v5.8.8                       2006-06-14                   PERL582DELTA(1)