If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.6.1, first readthe perl58delta, which describes differences between 5.6.0 and5.8.0, and the perl581delta, which describes differences between5.8.0 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, whichnecessitates breaking compatibility with 5.8.1. We see this as thelesser of two evils.

This will only affect people who have a threaded perl 5.8.1, and compiledmodules which use these calls, and now attempt to run the compiled moduleswith 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. Ittranspired that although the implementation introduced in 5.8.1 was sourcecompatible with 5.8.0, it was not binary compatible in certain cases. 5.8.2contains an improved implementation which is both source and binarycompatible with both 5.8.0 and 5.8.1, and remains robust against the form ofattack 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 originalrationale behind this change.

Threading

Several memory leaks associated with variables shared between threadshave 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 handledcorrectly by the parser.

Changed Internals

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

Platform Specific Problems

Dynamic linker flags have been tweaked for Solaris and OS X, which shouldsolve 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 workaround 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 propagatebug fixes out to stable releases more rapidly and make upgrading stablereleases less of an upheaval. This should give end users moreflexibility in their choice of upgrade timing, and allow them easierassessment of the impact of upgrades. The current plan is for code freezesas follows

5.8.3 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday December 31st 2003
5.8.4 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday March 31st 2004
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 articlesrecently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perlbug database at http://bugs.perl.org/. There may also beinformation at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbugprogram included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug downto a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with theoutput of perl -V, will be sent off to [email protected] to beanalysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and searchthe Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/

What is new for perl v5.8.2

Daftar Isi

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