Re: Minimum perl version supported

2009/12/21 Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 5:45 AM, Tim Bunce <Tim(dot)Bunce(at)pobox(dot)com> wrote:
>> FYI Perl 5.6.0 was released in March 2000. 5.6.2 in November 2003.
>
> Gosh, I feel old.  I started on Perl 4.036.
>
>>> What is worth a little bit of effort to establish is exactly what
>>> version of Perl we're already depending on, so that we can document
>>> that for the benefit of future tool writers.  There's no reason why
>>> this particular thing needs to be compatible further back than what is
>>> already required otherwise.
>>
>> I'd like to know the earliest version of perl that's supported for
>> PL/Perl, if that's ever been determined (I've not seen it in the docs).
>>
>> plperl requires Safe v2.09, released in Oct 2003 and included in 5.8.1.
>> That version, and later versions, have only been tested back to perl 5.6.
>>
>> I'd recommend Perl 5.6(.2) as a minimum for threads/multiplicity.
>> Perl 5.5 had complelely different, and unsafe, code for threads
>> and no concept of multiplicity.
>>
>> I'd recommend Perl 5.8(.1) as a minimum for UTF-8 databases.
>> Perl 5.7 had a complelely different, and flawed, concept of
>> Unicode operation.
>>
>> Tim.
>>
>> p.s. I'll test PL/Perl with perl 5.6.2 (assuming I can still build it on
>> my system) as part of testing the PL/Perl patches I'm working on.
>
> It's possible that we might support building the release in general
> with an older version of Perl than what we support for PL/perl, but it
> sounds like we may have already burned this bridge if the MSVC stuff
> expects something newer.  Maybe we should just document that 5.6 is

The MSVC stuff is only tested on 5.8.

> the minimum supported version to build from source and be done with it
> (we should clarify what MSVC requires).  If someone is running a 1990s

You mean somehting like
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/install-win32-full.html#AEN23266

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
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