Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
([Development] Jul 3, 2020 18:32 UTC (Fri) (corbet))
- Reference: 0000825234
- News link: https://lwn.net/Articles/825234/
- Source link:
Dan Book has done [1]a detailed analysis of the [2]Perl 7 transition . " Large amount of CPAN modules will not work in Perl 7; plans for working around this would either involve every affected CPAN author, which is a virtual impossibility for the stated 1 year time frame; or the toolchain group, a loose group of people who each maintain various modules and systems that are necessary for CPAN to function, who either have not been consulted as of yet or have not revealed their plans related to the tools they maintain. Going into this potential problem sufficiently would be longer than this blog post, but suffice to say that a Perl where highly used CPAN modules don't seamlessly work is not Perl. "
[1] http://blogs.perl.org/users/grinnz/2020/07/perl-7-a-risk-benefit-analysis.html
[2] https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/
[1] http://blogs.perl.org/users/grinnz/2020/07/perl-7-a-risk-benefit-analysis.html
[2] https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/
Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
At first I thought someone already published a book, and my first thought was, “Wow! That was quick!” :-)
The biggest pain in the behind when transitioning to a new Perl release usually is that a small obscure module which is a fourth-order dependency to a library you absolutely need, breaks.
The problem is not endemic to Perl, but while in Javascript modules grow and die overnight like weeds, Perl modules are like oak trees in the forest, decade-old ones are considered relatively new, and if the maintainer responds to you in the same quarter you wrote to them, it’s considered a quick response.
It’s more likely, though, that the module’s author has moved on to something else. Or that the module is a hostage of a feud between prominent “community members”. (My god, they are the reason I despise being a part of any “community”.) The efforts to give new life to such modules and bolt-on something like this to CPAN do look like they were bolted on and clunky (alt::Devel::CallParser::ButWorking, really?)
The whole illusion that CPAN is really comprehensive is hinged on the fact that Perl is extremely backwards-compatible. Introduce a slight incompatibity you cannot mitigate with an env variable or a clever option you can propagate down to all call levels, and the house of cards falls.
Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
At first I thought someone already published a book, and my first thought was, “Wow! That was quick!” :-)
The biggest pain in the behind when transitioning to a new Perl release usually is that a small obscure module which is a fourth-order dependency to a library you absolutely need, breaks.
The problem is not endemic to Perl, but while in Javascript modules grow and die overnight like weeds, Perl modules are like oak trees in the forest, decade-old ones are considered relatively new, and if the maintainer responds to you in the same quarter you wrote to them, it’s considered a quick response.
It’s more likely, though, that the module’s author has moved on to something else. Or that the module is a hostage of a feud between prominent “community members”. (My god, they are the reason I despise being a part of any “community”.) The efforts to give new life to such modules and bolt-on something like this to CPAN do look like they were bolted on and clunky (alt::Devel::CallParser::ButWorking, really?)
The whole illusion that CPAN is really comprehensive is hinged on the fact that Perl is extremely backwards-compatible. Introduce a slight incompatibity you cannot mitigate with an env variable or a clever option you can propagate down to all call levels, and the house of cards falls.
Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
What happened to Perl 6?
I'm still waiting for it. What did I miss?
Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
What happened to Perl 6?
I'm still waiting for it. What did I miss?
Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
It’s called Raku now and to date I’ve heard of no production code it’s running.
Book: Perl 7: A Risk-Benefit Analysis
It’s called Raku now and to date I’ve heard of no production code it’s running.