Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:22, Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:05, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 10:27, Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> wrote:
> [..]
>>> I've found that for add -p you'll need 5.8.x or newer, due to stuff like
>>>
>>>                my $fh = undef;
>>>                open($fh, '-|', @_) or die;
>>>
>>> which fails in e.g. perl 5.6.
>>> There could be some other stuff (in addition to add -p) that also does
>>> this kind of thing.
>>
>> If that's the case (I don't have a 5.6 here to do archeology on) then
>> git add -p never worked in 5.6. That was added in 5cde71d6 when it was
>> introduced in 2006:
>>
>>    +sub run_cmd_pipe {
>>    +       my $fh = undef;
>>    +       open($fh, '-|', @_) or die;
>>    +       return <$fh>;
>>    +}
>>
>> Can you show us the specific error you're getting, and the output of
>> your `perl -V` ?
>
> I don't have that particular installation anymore (I installed perl
> 5.8 on the machine I had trouble with), and the only other system I
> have left with perl 5.6 only has an old Git 1.5 version. But it's easy
> enough to reproduce, Perl 5.6 simply doesn't support that notation.
> Put the code above in a perl script and execute it:
>
> Can't use an undefined value as filehandle reference at test-pl.pl line 5.
> (that's the 'open' line)
>
> I can provide the output of -V if you wish, but I don't think it
> matters really, except for the version:

It matters because you keep saying "5.6", which is ambiguous since the
syntax in question was introduced in 5.6.1. The error you may be
having on 5.6.0 is very different from 5.6.1, and 5.6.2 has additional
bugfixes:

    http://search.cpan.org/~jesse/perl-5.12.2/pod/perl561delta.pod#open()_with_more_than_two_arguments

Anyway, I compiled maint-5.6 from perl.git and confirmed this:

    $ /home/avar/perl5/installed/bin/perl5.6.2 -Mdiagnostics -le
'print $]; sub run_cmd_pipe { my $fh = undef; open($fh, "-|", @_) or
die;  return <$fh>; } print run_cmd_pipe(qw(git --help));'
    5.006002
    Can't use an undefined value as filehandle reference at -e line 1 (#1)
        (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
        be a defined value.  This helps to delurk some insidious errors.

    Uncaught exception from user code:
            Can't use an undefined value as filehandle reference at -e line 1.
            main::run_cmd_pipe('git', '--help') called at -e line 1

As compared to a more recent perl:

    $ perl -Mdiagnostics -le 'print $]; sub run_cmd_pipe { my $fh =
undef; open($fh, "-|", @_) or die;  return <$fh>; } print
run_cmd_pipe(qw(git --help));'
    5.013004
    usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [--html-path]
    [...]

And to reply to Alex Riesen I can't get this to work with `my $fh`
(which would be undef too) or glob open either. Although it should be
possible with other types of pipe open, or even using temporary files.

    $ /home/avar/perl5/installed/bin/perl5.6.2 -Mdiagnostics -le
'print $]; sub run_cmd_pipe { local *TMP; open(TMP, "-|", @_) or die;
return <TMP>; } print run_cmd_pipe(qw(git --help));'
    5.006002
    Can't use an undefined value as filehandle reference at -e line 1 (#1)
        (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
        be a defined value.  This helps to delurk some insidious errors.

    Uncaught exception from user code:
            Can't use an undefined value as filehandle reference at -e line 1.
            main::run_cmd_pipe('git', '--help') called at -e line 1

However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.

I just tried running our test suite with maint-5.6 after compiling with:

    NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1
PERL_PATH=/home/avar/perl5/installed/bin/perl5.6.2
prefix=/opt/git/perl-56 all install

NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1 is needed because the ExtUtils::MakeMaker that
comes with 5.6.2 doesn't know how to move perl/private-Error.pm to
perl/blib/*/Error.pm. So if you don't provide it you'll get:

    $ /opt/git/perl-56/bin/git add -p
    Can't locate Error.pm

That would also break e.g. git-send-email.

Here are the test results *without* NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1, for
reference:

    Test Summary Report
    -------------------
    t2016-checkout-patch.sh                          (Wstat: 256
Tests: 14 Failed: 12)
      Failed tests:  2-13
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t3701-add-interactive.sh                         (Wstat: 256
Tests: 33 Failed: 17)
      Failed tests:  2, 4-5, 7, 9-10, 13, 16, 18, 21-25, 29
                    31, 33
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t3904-stash-patch.sh                             (Wstat: 256
Tests: 5 Failed: 2)
      Failed tests:  3-4
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t7105-reset-patch.sh                             (Wstat: 256
Tests: 8 Failed: 6)
      Failed tests:  2-7
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t7501-commit.sh                                  (Wstat: 256
Tests: 42 Failed: 1)
      Failed test:  21
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t7800-difftool.sh                                (Wstat: 256
Tests: 22 Failed: 21)
      Failed tests:  2-22
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t9700-perl-git.sh                                (Wstat: 256
Tests: 2 Failed: 1)
      Failed test:  2
      Non-zero exit status: 1
      Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output
    t9001-send-email.sh                              (Wstat: 256
Tests: 85 Failed: 59)
      Failed tests:  4-7, 9-10, 12-13, 15, 17-20, 22, 24, 26
                    28-30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48-55
                    58-77, 80-82, 85
      Non-zero exit status: 1

And with NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1:

    Test Summary Report
    -------------------
    t2016-checkout-patch.sh                          (Wstat: 256
Tests: 14 Failed: 12)
      Failed tests:  2-13
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t3904-stash-patch.sh                             (Wstat: 256
Tests: 5 Failed: 2)
      Failed tests:  3-4
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t3701-add-interactive.sh                         (Wstat: 256
Tests: 33 Failed: 17)
      Failed tests:  2, 4-5, 7, 9-10, 13, 16, 18, 21-25, 29
                    31, 33
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t7105-reset-patch.sh                             (Wstat: 256
Tests: 8 Failed: 6)
      Failed tests:  2-7
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t7501-commit.sh                                  (Wstat: 256
Tests: 42 Failed: 1)
      Failed test:  21
      Non-zero exit status: 1
    t9700-perl-git.sh                                (Wstat: 256
Tests: 14 Failed: 0)
      Non-zero exit status: 1
      Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output

All but the last error are due to this bug in
git-add--interactive.perl. I didn't track down what was wrong with
t9700-perl-git.sh.

git-svn would have failed too if I had SVN libraries:

    $ /opt/git/perl-56/bin/git svn
    Can't locate Digest/MD5.pm in @INC [...]

Getting a working Digest::* (and anything else git-svn needs) for 5.6
at this point is a *lot* harder than just compiling 5.8 (or even
better, 5.12).

Since we're not getting patches for common things that have been
broken on 5.6 for years and bumping the requirenment to an 8 year old
perl (5.8) instead of a 10 year old one (5.6) would make things much
easier, including:

 * Fixing the perl/ Makefile mess

 * Being able to use 5.8 features

 * Being able to honestly support the 5.8 release, 5.6 doesn't even
   compile on modern systems without undocumented monkeypatches, and
   few people use it so we don't get fixes for it.

I'd like to propose dropping 5.6 support, and move to say 5.008. I can
do the work required to add appropriate docs / use statements and
fixes to bugs that we can't fix on 5.6.

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Tor Arntsen]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:

> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.

5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to), except for those
like Irix 6.2 where it's hopeless anyway (perl 5.0). But I only have
access to irix/aix/solaris/tru64 in addition to Linux.

-Tor

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
>> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
>> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.
>
> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)

Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?

> except for those like Irix 6.2 where it's hopeless anyway (perl
> 5.0). But I only have access to irix/aix/solaris/tru64 in addition
> to Linux.

Hrm, 6.2 is old, but 5.12 is known to compile on 6.5 at least. What
are the issues with 6.2? Perhaps they could be solved if someone with
such a machine contributed a smoker for the perl core.

Perl is very portable with people willing to port it, the main
limitation is usually that porters don't have access to obscure
systems, not that there isn't interest.

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Ævar" == Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Ævar> Since we're not getting patches for common things that have been
Ævar> broken on 5.6 for years and bumping the requirenment to an 8 year old
Ævar> perl (5.8) instead of a 10 year old one (5.6) would make things much
Ævar> easier, including:

Ævar>  * Fixing the perl/ Makefile mess

Ævar>  * Being able to use 5.8 features

Ævar>  * Being able to honestly support the 5.8 release, 5.6 doesn't even
Ævar>    compile on modern systems without undocumented monkeypatches, and
Ævar>    few people use it so we don't get fixes for it.

Ævar> I'd like to propose dropping 5.6 support, and move to say 5.008. I can
Ævar> do the work required to add appropriate docs / use statements and
Ævar> fixes to bugs that we can't fix on 5.6.

As the token resident Perl expert, I'd be completely fine with that.
Sane choice.

It might be useful to document that by adding:

  require 5.008;

at the beginning of each file that presumes it, as you get around to
editing it.

That way, Perl won't even try to run it if it's too old.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Andreas Ericsson]

On 09/24/2010 03:32 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen<tor@spacetec.no>  wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason<avarab@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
>>> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
>>> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.
>>
>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)
> 
> Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?
> 

Fedora 13 ships with Perl 5.10.0. IIRC, Fedora 12 (or possibly 11)
shipped with Perl 5.8. Let's not ask for more angry users than we
can handle. Since the current code seems to work fine with 5.8 and
later, I think that's a safe minimum to require for full git
functionality. Especially considering it was 3 years since we
decided on 5.6, which was by then 7 years old.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

Considering the successes of the wars on alcohol, poverty, drugs and
terror, I think we should give some serious thought to declaring war
on peace.

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:47, Randal L. Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Ævar" == Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>
> Ævar> Since we're not getting patches for common things that have been
> Ævar> broken on 5.6 for years and bumping the requirenment to an 8 year old
> Ævar> perl (5.8) instead of a 10 year old one (5.6) would make things much
> Ævar> easier, including:
>
> Ævar>  * Fixing the perl/ Makefile mess
>
> Ævar>  * Being able to use 5.8 features
>
> Ævar>  * Being able to honestly support the 5.8 release, 5.6 doesn't even
> Ævar>    compile on modern systems without undocumented monkeypatches, and
> Ævar>    few people use it so we don't get fixes for it.
>
> Ævar> I'd like to propose dropping 5.6 support, and move to say 5.008. I can
> Ævar> do the work required to add appropriate docs / use statements and
> Ævar> fixes to bugs that we can't fix on 5.6.
>
> As the token resident Perl expert, I'd be completely fine with that.
> Sane choice.
>
> It might be useful to document that by adding:
>
>  require 5.008;

Right, except that should be `use 5.008`. Since you don't want to run
anything else within an implicit or explicit BEGIN block before perl
fails on that. E.g. `require 5.008; use Digest::MD5;` would just spew
an error about Digest::MD5.

The only reason you'd want `require $version' is if you care about
5.005, but even then you can do `BEGIN { require 5.008 }`.

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Randal L. Schwartz]

>>>>> "Ævar" == Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Ævar> Right, except that should be `use 5.008`. Since you don't want to run
Ævar> anything else within an implicit or explicit BEGIN block before perl
Ævar> fails on that. E.g. `require 5.008; use Digest::MD5;` would just spew
Ævar> an error about Digest::MD5.

Fairy 'nuff.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/ for Smalltalk and Seaside discussion

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Tor Arntsen]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 15:32, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
>>> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
>>> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.
>>
>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)
>
> Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?

Anything later than 5.8 seems to very unusual except for Linux (and
presumably *bsd).

>> except for those like Irix 6.2 where it's hopeless anyway (perl
>> 5.0). But I only have access to irix/aix/solaris/tru64 in addition
>> to Linux.
>
> Hrm, 6.2 is old, but 5.12 is known to compile on 6.5 at least. What
> are the issues with 6.2? Perhaps they could be solved if someone with
> such a machine contributed a smoker for the perl core.

IRIX 6.2 is simply suffering for being old. Unless you have to
maintain a legacy system (as I do) you would probably have upgraded to
IRIX 6.5 anyway.
(Actually it turns out that I wasn't entirely correct in what I wrote
earlier - the SGI freeware version of Perl for IRIX 6.5 is still at
5.6.1, because they stopped updating that repository. There's another
3party semi-official repo for IRIX now, not hosted by SGI, but I'm not
familiar with it.

> Perl is very portable with people willing to port it, the main
> limitation is usually that porters don't have access to obscure
> systems, not that there isn't interest.

People interested in installing Git will probably first want to look
for a pre-made package, and, if not, build it themselves. At that
point, however, they would probably give up if it turns out they have
to start building the underlying stuff (e.g. Perl) themselves too, so
I tend to look for the lowest common denominator for 3party packages
(e.g. 5.8 if we can get away with it, not 5.10). IRIX 6.5 is a bit
unfortunate in this though. IRIX 6.2 can be considered an unlikely
corner case.

-Tor

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Pascal Obry]

Le 24/09/2010 15:08, Tor Arntsen a écrit :
> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to), except for those
> like Irix 6.2 where it's hopeless anyway (perl 5.0). But I only have
> access to irix/aix/solaris/tru64 in addition to Linux.

5.10 is available on Cygwin.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|    http://www.obry.net  -  http://v2p.fr.eu.org
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Brian Gernhardt]

On Sep 24, 2010, at 10:08 AM, Tor Arntsen wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 15:32, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> wrote:
>>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
>>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)
>> 
>> Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?
> 
> Anything later than 5.8 seems to very unusual except for Linux (and
> presumably *bsd).

Based on www.opensource.apple.com, OS X started having 5.8 in OS X 10.3.0.  (And has only had 5.10 starting with 10.6.)  I don't know if macports or fink still support older OS X versions, so likely a 5.8 requirement would make anyone OS X older than 10.3 build perl-5.8 from source.

Just FYI,
~~ Brian

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:59, Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se> wrote:
> On 09/24/2010 03:32 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen<tor@spacetec.no>  wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason<avarab@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
>>>> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
>>>> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.
>>>
>>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
>>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)
>>
>> Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?
>>
>
> Fedora 13 ships with Perl 5.10.0. IIRC, Fedora 12 (or possibly 11)
> shipped with Perl 5.8. Let's not ask for more angry users than we
> can handle. Since the current code seems to work fine with 5.8 and
> later, I think that's a safe minimum to require for full git
> functionality.

I didn't mean to suggest we bump to 5.10 now. I just thought I'd ask
for the record in case we have this discussion again 3-4 years from
now.

> Especially considering it was 3 years since we decided on 5.6, which
> was by then 7 years old.

Do you happen to have a link to that discussion? I can't find it.

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Joshua Juran]

On Sep 24, 2010, at 10:38 AM, Pascal Obry wrote:

> Le 24/09/2010 15:08, Tor Arntsen a écrit :
>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is  
>> available
>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to), except for  
>> those
>> like Irix 6.2 where it's hopeless anyway (perl 5.0). But I only have
>> access to irix/aix/solaris/tru64 in addition to Linux.
>
> 5.10 is available on Cygwin.

Lamp doesn't have 5.8 (only 5.6.1), but it doesn't have svn, either.

Josh

[PATCH/RFC] perl: bump the required Perl version to 5.8 from 5.6.[21]

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

Formalize our dependency on perl 5.8, bumped from 5.6.[12]. We already
used the three-arg form of open() which was introduced in 5.6.1, but
t/t9700/test.pl explicitly depended on 5.6.2.

However git-add--interactive.pl has been failing on the 5.6 line since
it was introduced in v1.5.0-rc0~12^2~2 back in 2006 due to this open
syntax:

    sub run_cmd_pipe {
           my $fh = undef;
           open($fh, '-|', @_) or die;
           return <$fh>;
    }

Which when executed dies on "Can't use an undefined value as
filehandle reference". Several of our tests also fail on 5.6 (even
more when compiled with NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1):

    t2016-checkout-patch.sh
    t3904-stash-patch.sh
    t3701-add-interactive.sh
    t7105-reset-patch.sh
    t7501-commit.sh
    t9700-perl-git.sh

Our code is bitrotting on 5.6 with no-one interested in fixing it, and
pinning us to such an ancient release of Perl is keeping us from using
useful features introduced in the 5.8 release.

The 5.6 series is now over 10 years old, and the 5.6.2 maintenance
release almost 7. 5.8 on the other hand is more than 8 years old.

All the modern Unix-like operating systems have now upgraded to it or
a later version, and 5.8 packages are available for old IRIX, AIX
Solaris and Tru64 systems.

Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no>
Acked-by: Randal L. Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com>
---

A follow-up to the discussion in "Let's bump the minimum Perl version
to 5.8". I took the liberty of adding Tor and Randal's Acked-by to the
patch based on their comments in the thread. Which is why this is an
RFC, if they're OK with it it can be applied.

 INSTALL                    |    8 ++++----
 git-add--interactive.perl  |    1 +
 git-archimport.perl        |    1 +
 git-cvsexportcommit.perl   |    1 +
 git-cvsimport.perl         |    1 +
 git-cvsserver.perl         |    1 +
 git-difftool.perl          |    1 +
 git-relink.perl            |    2 +-
 git-send-email.perl        |    1 +
 git-svn.perl               |    1 +
 gitweb/gitweb.perl         |    1 +
 perl/Git.pm                |    1 +
 t/t7006/test-terminal.perl |    1 +
 t/t9700/test.pl            |    2 +-
 14 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index 59200b7..10a1cba 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -67,10 +67,10 @@ Issues of note:
 	- A POSIX-compliant shell is required to run many scripts needed
 	  for everyday use (e.g. "bisect", "pull").
 
-	- "Perl" is needed to use some of the features (e.g. preparing a
-	  partial commit using "git add -i/-p", interacting with svn
-	  repositories with "git svn").  If you can live without these, use
-	  NO_PERL.
+	- "Perl" version 5.8 or later is needed to use some of the
+	  features (e.g. preparing a partial commit using "git add -i/-p",
+	  interacting with svn repositories with "git svn").  If you can
+	  live without these, use NO_PERL.
 
 	- "openssl" library is used by git-imap-send to use IMAP over SSL.
 	  If you don't need it, use NO_OPENSSL.
diff --git a/git-add--interactive.perl b/git-add--interactive.perl
index 27fc793..a96fb53 100755
--- a/git-add--interactive.perl
+++ b/git-add--interactive.perl
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 #!/usr/bin/perl -w
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use Git;
 
diff --git a/git-archimport.perl b/git-archimport.perl
index 98f3ede..947638c 100755
--- a/git-archimport.perl
+++ b/git-archimport.perl
@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ and can contain multiple, unrelated branches.
 
 =cut
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use Getopt::Std;
diff --git a/git-cvsexportcommit.perl b/git-cvsexportcommit.perl
index 59b6722..9a8188b 100755
--- a/git-cvsexportcommit.perl
+++ b/git-cvsexportcommit.perl
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 #!/usr/bin/perl -w
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use Getopt::Std;
 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
diff --git a/git-cvsimport.perl b/git-cvsimport.perl
index 9e03eee..53869fb 100755
--- a/git-cvsimport.perl
+++ b/git-cvsimport.perl
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
 # The head revision is on branch "origin" by default.
 # You can change that with the '-o' option.
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use Getopt::Long;
diff --git a/git-cvsserver.perl b/git-cvsserver.perl
index e9f3037..2822bed 100755
--- a/git-cvsserver.perl
+++ b/git-cvsserver.perl
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
 ####
 ####
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use bytes;
diff --git a/git-difftool.perl b/git-difftool.perl
index adc42de..e95e4ad 100755
--- a/git-difftool.perl
+++ b/git-difftool.perl
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
 #
 # Any arguments that are unknown to this script are forwarded to 'git diff'.
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use Cwd qw(abs_path);
diff --git a/git-relink.perl b/git-relink.perl
index 937c69a..af2e305 100755
--- a/git-relink.perl
+++ b/git-relink.perl
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 #
 # Scan two git object-trees, and hardlink any common objects between them.
 
-use 5.006;
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use Getopt::Long;
diff --git a/git-send-email.perl b/git-send-email.perl
index 6dab3bf..314e59e 100755
--- a/git-send-email.perl
+++ b/git-send-email.perl
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
 #    and second line is the subject of the message.
 #
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use Term::ReadLine;
diff --git a/git-svn.perl b/git-svn.perl
index 9b046b6..d292224 100755
--- a/git-svn.perl
+++ b/git-svn.perl
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env perl
 # Copyright (C) 2006, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net>
 # License: GPL v2 or later
+use 5.008;
 use warnings;
 use strict;
 use vars qw/	$AUTHOR $VERSION
diff --git a/gitweb/gitweb.perl b/gitweb/gitweb.perl
index a85e2f6..e645d4a 100755
--- a/gitweb/gitweb.perl
+++ b/gitweb/gitweb.perl
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
 #
 # This program is licensed under the GPLv2
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use CGI qw(:standard :escapeHTML -nosticky);
diff --git a/perl/Git.pm b/perl/Git.pm
index 6cb0dd1..205e48a 100644
--- a/perl/Git.pm
+++ b/perl/Git.pm
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ Git - Perl interface to the Git version control system
 
 package Git;
 
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 
 
diff --git a/t/t7006/test-terminal.perl b/t/t7006/test-terminal.perl
index 73ff809..6b5f22a 100755
--- a/t/t7006/test-terminal.perl
+++ b/t/t7006/test-terminal.perl
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 #!/usr/bin/perl
+use 5.008;
 use strict;
 use warnings;
 use IO::Pty;
diff --git a/t/t9700/test.pl b/t/t9700/test.pl
index 671f38d..c15ca2d 100755
--- a/t/t9700/test.pl
+++ b/t/t9700/test.pl
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 #!/usr/bin/perl
 use lib (split(/:/, $ENV{GITPERLLIB}));
 
-use 5.006002;
+use 5.008;
 use warnings;
 use strict;
 
-- 
1.7.3.256.g00e8a

[PATCH] perl: use "use warnings" instead of -w

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

Change the Perl scripts to turn on lexical warnings instead of setting
the global $^W variable via the -w switch.

The -w sets warnings for all code that interpreter runs, while "use
warnings" is lexically scoped. The former is probably not what the
authors wanted.

As an auxiliary benefit it's now possible to build Git with:

    PERL_PATH='/usr/bin/env perl'

Which would previously result in failures, since "#!/usr/bin/env perl -w"
doesn't work as a shebang.

Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
---

This is a re-send, it's independent of bumping the version to 5.8 (use
warnings was introduced in 5.6), but a good idea anyway.

 contrib/examples/git-svnimport.perl         |    2 +-
 contrib/fast-import/import-directories.perl |    3 ++-
 git-add--interactive.perl                   |    3 ++-
 git-archimport.perl                         |    2 +-
 git-cvsexportcommit.perl                    |    3 ++-
 git-cvsimport.perl                          |    2 +-
 git-send-email.perl                         |    2 +-
 7 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/contrib/examples/git-svnimport.perl b/contrib/examples/git-svnimport.perl
index 4576c4a..ead4c04 100755
--- a/contrib/examples/git-svnimport.perl
+++ b/contrib/examples/git-svnimport.perl
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 
 # This tool is copyright (c) 2005, Matthias Urlichs.
 # It is released under the Gnu Public License, version 2.
diff --git a/contrib/fast-import/import-directories.perl b/contrib/fast-import/import-directories.perl
index 3a5da4a..7f3afa5 100755
--- a/contrib/fast-import/import-directories.perl
+++ b/contrib/fast-import/import-directories.perl
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 #
 # Copyright 2008-2009 Peter Krefting <peter@softwolves.pp.se>
 #
@@ -140,6 +140,7 @@ by whitespace or other characters.
 
 # Globals
 use strict;
+use warnings;
 use integer;
 my $crlfmode = 0;
 my @revs;
diff --git a/git-add--interactive.perl b/git-add--interactive.perl
index a96fb53..77f60fa 100755
--- a/git-add--interactive.perl
+++ b/git-add--interactive.perl
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 
 use 5.008;
 use strict;
+use warnings;
 use Git;
 
 binmode(STDOUT, ":raw");
diff --git a/git-archimport.perl b/git-archimport.perl
index 947638c..bc32f18 100755
--- a/git-archimport.perl
+++ b/git-archimport.perl
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 #
 # This tool is copyright (c) 2005, Martin Langhoff.
 # It is released under the Gnu Public License, version 2.
diff --git a/git-cvsexportcommit.perl b/git-cvsexportcommit.perl
index 9a8188b..39a426e 100755
--- a/git-cvsexportcommit.perl
+++ b/git-cvsexportcommit.perl
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 
 use 5.008;
 use strict;
+use warnings;
 use Getopt::Std;
 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
 use Data::Dumper;
diff --git a/git-cvsimport.perl b/git-cvsimport.perl
index 53869fb..249aeaf 100755
--- a/git-cvsimport.perl
+++ b/git-cvsimport.perl
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 
 # This tool is copyright (c) 2005, Matthias Urlichs.
 # It is released under the Gnu Public License, version 2.
diff --git a/git-send-email.perl b/git-send-email.perl
index 314e59e..d10d869 100755
--- a/git-send-email.perl
+++ b/git-send-email.perl
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/perl -w
+#!/usr/bin/perl
 #
 # Copyright 2002,2005 Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
 # Copyright 2005 Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>
-- 
1.7.3.256.g00e8a

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Andreas Ericsson]

On 09/24/2010 09:10 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:59, Andreas Ericsson<ae@op5.se>  wrote:
>> On 09/24/2010 03:32 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen<tor@spacetec.no>    wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason<avarab@gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
>>>>> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
>>>>> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.
>>>>
>>>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>>>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
>>>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>>>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)
>>>
>>> Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?
>>>
>>
>> Fedora 13 ships with Perl 5.10.0. IIRC, Fedora 12 (or possibly 11)
>> shipped with Perl 5.8. Let's not ask for more angry users than we
>> can handle. Since the current code seems to work fine with 5.8 and
>> later, I think that's a safe minimum to require for full git
>> functionality.
> 
> I didn't mean to suggest we bump to 5.10 now. I just thought I'd ask
> for the record in case we have this discussion again 3-4 years from
> now.
> 
>> Especially considering it was 3 years since we decided on 5.6, which
>> was by then 7 years old.
> 
> Do you happen to have a link to that discussion? I can't find it.

I was writing from memory, and I was wrong. Commit messages seems to
point to february 2006 as the "let's be Perl 5.6 compatible" time.

  git log --grep="Perl.*5.6"

might prove useful. 4.5 years then, and not 3. My, how time flies.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

Considering the successes of the wars on alcohol, poverty, drugs and
terror, I think we should give some serious thought to declaring war
on peace.

Re: [PATCH/RFC] perl: bump the required Perl version to 5.8 from 5.6.[21]

[Tor Arntsen]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 22:00, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> A follow-up to the discussion in "Let's bump the minimum Perl version
> to 5.8". I took the liberty of adding Tor and Randal's Acked-by to the
> patch based on their comments in the thread. Which is why this is an
> RFC, if they're OK with it it can be applied.

This is OK with me.

-Tor

Re: [PATCH/RFC] perl: bump the required Perl version to 5.8 from 5.6.[21]

[Tom G. Christensen]

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> Formalize our dependency on perl 5.8, bumped from 5.6.[12]. We already
> used the three-arg form of open() which was introduced in 5.6.1, but
> t/t9700/test.pl explicitly depended on 5.6.2.
> 
> However git-add--interactive.pl has been failing on the 5.6 line since
> it was introduced in v1.5.0-rc0~12^2~2 back in 2006 due to this open
> syntax:
> 
>     sub run_cmd_pipe {
>            my $fh = undef;
>            open($fh, '-|', @_) or die;
>            return <$fh>;
>     }
> 
This issue and possible solutions was previously discussed in-depth here:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/94394

> Which when executed dies on "Can't use an undefined value as
> filehandle reference". Several of our tests also fail on 5.6 (even
> more when compiled with NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1):
> 
>     t2016-checkout-patch.sh
>     t3904-stash-patch.sh
>     t3701-add-interactive.sh
>     t7105-reset-patch.sh
>     t7501-commit.sh
>     t9700-perl-git.sh
> 
> Our code is bitrotting on 5.6 with no-one interested in fixing it, and
> pinning us to such an ancient release of Perl is keeping us from using
> useful features introduced in the 5.8 release.
> 
FWIW I build rpms and run git on RHEL 2.1 with perl 5.6.1.

These are the settings I use:
NO_CURL=1 (curl 7.8.1 is too old)
NO_TCLTK=1 (tcl/tk 8.3 is too old)
NO_NSEC=1
NO_EXTERNAL_GREP=1 (GNU grep 2.4.2 is apparently too old)
NO_REGEX=1 (glibc regex breaks t7008.11, also needed for el3)
NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER=1 (ExtUtils::MakeMaker is too old)

GIT_SKIP_TESTS="t2016 t3701 t3904 t7105 t7501.21"

Additionally to fix NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER I use this patch:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/130159

To build with OpenSSL 0.9.6 I also add this in git-compat-util.h:
# if SSLEAY_VERSION_NUMBER < 0x00907000L
# define HMAC_CTX_cleanup    HMAC_cleanup
# endif

With these settings I have zero testsuite failures (just verified with 
1.7.3).
t9700 is automatically skipped because Test::More is not available in 
perl 5.6.1. gitweb requires 5.8 and is also skipped automatically.
I do not have subversion available on RHEL 2.1 so those tests are also 
skipped.
CVS server/import tests are skipped because I do not have cvsps and 
perl-SQLite available.

IIRC there has been no change in the functionality with perl 5.6.1 since 
the last time the 'open syntax' issue was discussed.

Having the specific parts known not to work with perl 5.6.x fail 
gracefully at runtime would be an improvement.

-tgc

Re: Let's bump the minimum Perl version to 5.8

[Tom G. Christensen]

Tor Arntsen wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 15:32, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 13:08, Tor Arntsen <tor@spacetec.no> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 14:56, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> However, I'd like to shift the discussion a bit: Do we want to support
>>>> the 5.6 line *at all* anymore? I don't think so. As you point out
>>>> yourself you can just compile 5.8 or later on these machines.
>>> 5.8 as minimum is probably for the best. It's not that just you can
>>> compile a newer version (5.8), more importantly, Perl 5.8 is available
>>> as a package from those semi-official 3party repositories for most
>>> systems (at least the *nix systems I have access to)
>> Do those repositories also have 5.10 and 5.12?
> 
> Anything later than 5.8 seems to very unusual except for Linux (and
> presumably *bsd).
> 
In Linux land atleast the current crop of RHEL dists are on 5.8.x and 
for RHEL5 this is supported until 2014 (2017 with ELS).

>>> except for those like Irix 6.2 where it's hopeless anyway (perl
>>> 5.0). But I only have access to irix/aix/solaris/tru64 in addition
>>> to Linux.
>> Hrm, 6.2 is old, but 5.12 is known to compile on 6.5 at least. What
>> are the issues with 6.2? Perhaps they could be solved if someone with
>> such a machine contributed a smoker for the perl core.
> 
> IRIX 6.2 is simply suffering for being old. Unless you have to
> maintain a legacy system (as I do) you would probably have upgraded to
> IRIX 6.5 anyway.
> (Actually it turns out that I wasn't entirely correct in what I wrote
> earlier - the SGI freeware version of Perl for IRIX 6.5 is still at
> 5.6.1, because they stopped updating that repository. There's another
> 3party semi-official repo for IRIX now, not hosted by SGI, but I'm not
> familiar with it.
> 
There are currently 2 maintained options for IRIX users:
nekochan (requires IRIX 6.5.21 or better)
tgcware (IRIX 5.3 & 6.2, will also run on 6.3, 6.4, 6.5).

I maintain tgcware and have prebuilt git packages available (1.7.2.3).

Git does not build on IRIX < 6.3 without adding some sort of thirdparty 
(v)snprintf code since those functions are missing in libc. I use the 
ctrio library for this purpose.

-tgc