Schwern writes "Alan Burlison just sent this along to p5p this morning.
I would like to informally announce the availability of Perl 5.6.1 in the forthcoming Solaris 9 release. Because 5.6.1 has been built to be binary-incompatible with the existing 5.005_03 version shipped in Solaris 8, Solaris 9 will contain both 5.6.1 and 5.005_03, with the default version being 5.6.1.
"The Solaris perl lives under/usr/perl5, so it will not conflict with any versions installed under /usr/local. All existing perl scripts and modules that ship as part of Solaris 8 have been updated to use 5.6.1, and I hope to be adding new scripts and/or modules to Solaris 9 and/or Solaris 9 updates. In addition, a cut-down version of perl is available in the Solaris miniroot (install-time OS) of both Solaris 8 and 9, so that it can be used as part of customised JumpStart scripts, for example.
It is also my intention to apply selected patches from http://public.ActiveState.com/gsar/APC/5.6.2/diffs as late on as possible before the Solaris 9 development cutoff.
Alan Burlison
They had to make it binary incompatible with 5.005_03 in order to turn on 64 bit integers and large file support."
Considering it wasn't so long ago that Sun didn't include traceroute with Solaris this seems nearly heroic. Solaris SAs around the world thank you
I don't suppose you will be calling this the 'burning duck' release? *teehee*
I've found them to be pretty good friends ever since 8, when 5.005_03 was included. The perlsolaris documentation page is real educational, and provided by a Sun employee, I think. Of course, ever since 5.6 came out, I've been putting that on there myself. Plus, the included perl assumed you wanted to compile modules with cc instead of gcc. Easily remedied, though, and I'll bet the 5.6.1 installation will be more flexible.
That employee was probably the above-mentioned Alan Burlison, actually. If you run perl on Solaris, Alan is your friend. Thanks for everything, Alan!
Hey! 64-bit integers and large file support? Wow! Thanks again, Alan.
