From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Tels" <nospam-pg-abuse@bloodgate.com>
cc: "Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: PL_stashcache, or, what's our minimum Perl version?
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Comments: In-reply-to "Tels" <nospam-pg-abuse@bloodgate.com>
	message dated "Sun, 30 Jul 2017 04:48:18 -0400"
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Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2017 12:22:38 -0400
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"Tels" <nospam-pg-abuse@bloodgate.com> writes:
> On Sun, July 30, 2017 1:21 am, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> So the question is, does anyone care?  I wouldn't except that our
>>> documentation appears to claim that we work with Perl "5.8 or later".

> Not sure how often People use old Perl versions out in the field. I'd
> venture this is either happens with "ancient" stuff, e.g. where people
> just can't or want upgrade.
> Otherwise, an up-to-date OS is just necessary for security, anyway, and
> that would contain a Perl from this decade, wouldn't it?

Well, that's not really the point, IMO.  The reason I'm interested in
this is the same reason I run some buildfarm critters on ancient
platforms: if we do something that breaks backwards compatibility
with old software, we should know it and make a deliberate decision
that it's okay.  (And update the relevant compatibility claims in our
docs.)  Moving the compatibility goalposts without knowing it isn't
good, especially if it happens in supposedly-stable release branches.

>> I am unable to confirm our claim that we work with Test::More 0.82,
>> because CPAN has only versions from a year or three back.  (Anyone
>> know of a more, er, comprehensive archive than CPAN?)  It's also
>> interesting to speculate about how old a version of IPC::Run is new
>> enough, but I see no easy way to get much data on that either.

> Test::More has been bundled with Perl since 5.6.2 (you can use "corelist"
> to check for these things), so if all fails, it might be possible to
> extract a version from a Perl distribution [4].

Yeah, I looked into that.  The closest candidate I can find is that
perl 5.10.1 contains Test::More 0.92.  However, it's not real clear
to me exactly which files I'd need to pull out of 5.10.1 and inject into
an older tarball --- the layout seems a lot different from a standalone
package.

			regards, tom lane


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