ActivePerl 827 -- Release Notes
Welcome, and thank you for downloading ActivePerl. This release
corresponds to Perl version 5.8.9.
The following platforms are supported by this release:
* AIX 5.1 or later (rs6000)
* HP-UX: 11.00 or later (PA-RISC)
* Linux: glibc 2.3 or later (x86 and x64)
* Mac OS X 10.4 or later (x86 and powerpc)
* Solaris 2.8 or later (sparc, 32 and 64 bit)
* Solaris 10 or later (x86)
* Windows 2000 (x86)
* Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7 (x86 and x64)
For a chronological list of changes included in this and past releases,
see the ActivePerl 5.8 Change Log.
Incompatibilities
Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with Perl 5.6. In particular, do not
attempt to use extensions or PPM packages built for ActivePerl 600
series builds with ActivePerl 800 series builds and vice versa. Please
check "Incompatible Changes" in perl58delta for known source level
incompatibilities between the Perl 5.8 releases and the earlier
releases in the Perl 5.6 series.
You may also want to check "Incompatible Changes" in perl581delta,
"Incompatible Changes" in perl582delta, and "Incompatible Changes" in
perl584delta, for additional minor incompatible changes made in Perl
5.8.1, Perl 5.8.2 and Perl 5.8.4 respectively.
The following incompatibilities described below do not apply to HP-UX:
Changed order in @INC, simplified directory structure, PPM4. These
changes will be implemented for HP-UX in ActivePerl 5.10.
The order of the directories in @INC has changed since build 817 of
ActivePerl. The $PREFIX/site/lib directory is now searched for modules
before $PREFIX/lib. This means that core modules might be shadowed by
what is installed locally and these updates might bring
incompatibilities that break applications only tested against the
original core module.
All modules that ActivePerl bundles in addition to the core modules
are now installed in $PREFIX/lib. In ActivePerl build 817 and earlier,
these were installed in $PREFIX/site/lib.
The $Config{siteprefix} is now $PREFIX/site. In ActivePerl build 817
and earlier, it was just $PREFIX and $Config{sitelib} compensated by
introducing the site level. As a consequence programs included with
packages installed into the "site" area now get installed in
$PREFIX/site/bin. In ActivePerl build 817 and earlier, these were
installed in $PREFIX/bin. Another consequence of the
$Config{siteprefix} update is that modules configured and built with
"perl [Link] PREFIX=..." are now installed directly in the lib
directory of the given "PREFIX".
PPM version 4
PPM version 4 differs from version 3 (distributed with ActivePerl
build 817 and earlier) in the following ways:
* Running "ppm" without arguments now bring up a graphical user
interface; there is a separate program called "ppm-shell" that
gives you an interface similar to the old console shell.
* The output format of most commands have changed. Scripts that parse
the output of "ppm" need to change.
* "ppm describe" only takes a *number* as argument. The other forms
are not supported.
* "ppm install" without argument does not install a default package
and does not support the *range* argument. The "--follow" and
"--no-follow" options are not supported.
* "ppm profile", "ppm properties", "ppm set", and "ppm target"
commands are not supported.
* "ppm repo up" and "ppm repo down" commands are not supported.
* "ppm search" does not support the *field*=*glob* syntax.
* SOAP-based repositories are no longer supported.
Known Issues
PPM
* The PPM state database (containing configuration information for
repositories, view options in the GUI, and repository state) is not
imported from previous installations.
If you have added custom PPM 4 repositories with ActivePerl
[Link], you should reconfigure them manually with "ppm repo add
..." or in the GUI. The repository state will be automatically
re-synchronized when PPM is run.
* Post install scripts for packages installed from the GUI will not
be able to receive non-default answers for any prompts it might
produce. Packages that need non-default answers must be installed
with the command line version of ppm.
* List icons will sometimes not repaint properly after scrolling
under X11. This does not affect the Windows and Mac OS X builds.
* Running "sudo ppm ..." the first time "ppm" is invoked from a
regular user account on Unix will create a *root* owned state
database. This effectively makes the database read-only when
running "ppm" without "sudo", and might manifest itself as
Application Error dialogs when running the GUI. Workaround is to
run "sudo chown -R $USER ~/.ActivePerl" once to fix up ownership of
the state database.
* No PPM GUI for the 64 bit versions of ActivePerl.
AIX
* GNU tar is required to extract the ActivePerl tarball into the
filesystem. A precompiled version of GNU tar for AIX 5L can be
found here:
[Link]
You can also get the source package for GNU tar from:
[Link]
* The reloc_perl script does not correctly update the perl-dynamic
executable. The workaround is to install directly from the tarball
into the new location.
Solaris
* GNU tar is required to extract the ActivePerl tarball into the
filesystem. A precompiled version of GNU tar for Solaris is
available from:
[Link]
You can also get the source package for GNU tar from:
[Link]
* The suidperl executable is not included in this package due to
potential security issues. If you wish to use suidperl in your
installation, we recommend building Perl from source. The source
code for ActivePerl is available at:
[Link]
Mac OS X
* Perl library paths, and thus PPM Areas, defined in the shell by the
PERL5LIB environment variable are not available to PPM when it is
launched by clicking the PPM icon in OS X. To to make this variable
available in the OS X GUI, add an entry similar to the following to
~/.MacOSX/[Link]:
<key>PERL5LIB</key>
<string>/path/to/perl/lib</string>
* Running "sudo ppm" or "sudo ppm gui" does not start up the GUI with
*root* privileges. Use "ppm" as a command line tool with "sudo".
Windows
* The installer cannot create IIS script mappings on Windows Vista
and Windows Server 2008.
* The fork() emulation has known limitations. See perlfork for a
detailed summary. In particular, fork() emulation will not work
correctly with extensions that are either not thread-safe, or
maintain internal state that cannot be cloned in the pseudo-child
process. This caveat currently applies to extensions such as Tk and
Storable.
* It seems that some people are having problems with the ActivePerl
MSI installer. The first thing to note is that you CANNOT install
ActivePerl 5.8 over an older version of ActivePerl based on 5.6 or
5.005, such as build 633 or any other 600 or 500 series build. We
have determined that some of these problems are due to other
installations of Perl that may be pointed at by something in the
environment.
The sure-fire solution is to make absolutely certain that no other
installations of Perl are on the target machine. Realizing that
this is not always possible, you can follow these steps to ensure
the other installations will not interfere.
1 Stop the "Windows Installer" service. This can be accomplished
from the command prompt using the following command:
c:\> net stop "Windows Installer"
2 Temporarily remove or rename PERLLIB and PERL5LIB environment
variables in the system environment.
3 Temporarily remove or rename the following registry values:
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] lib = <directory> (REG_SV)
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] sitelib = <directory> (REG_SV)
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] lib-<PerlVersion> = <directory>
(REG_SV)
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] sitelib-<PerlVersion> =
<directory>(REG_SV)
4 Proceed with the installation.
Once the installation has completed successfully, the above actions
may be undone although restoring the environment variables or the
registry values may interfere with the proper operation of your new
ActivePerl installation. In order to perform all of the above
steps, you will need to have Administrative privileges on the
target machine. If you do not have the required privileges you
should contact you Administrator.
The following Microsoft knowledge base articles may be helpful in
solving MSI problems:
Q236597 - OFF2000: Error Message: The Installation Package Could
Not Be Opened ...
[Link]
Q224094 - OFF2000: Error Message: This Application Requires the
Windows Installer to Run
[Link]
Q247532 - Works 2000 Err Msg: Installer Terminated Prematurely
[Link]
"Error 1303. The installer has insufficient privileges..." Running
Office Setup
[Link]
Error Message: Error 1316 Running Setup for Admin Installation
[Link]
Error 1327 Invalid Drive During Office Installation
[Link]
* On Windows 9x, the system must be rebooted for the PATH environment
variable to take effect.
* On Windows 9x, the PATH environment variable settings are not
removed after an uninstall.
Further Information
The Perl distribution comes with extensive documentation. On Unix
platforms, all the standard documentation is installed as man pages
under the Perl install location. The location of the man pages may
need to be added to the MANPATH environment variable in order to
access them. For example, in the C shell:
% setenv MANPATH /opt/ActivePerl-5.8/man:$MANPATH
The documentation is installed in HTML format on all platforms. If
ActivePerl was installed in /opt/ActivePerl-5.8 then the HTML
documentation would be located in /opt/ActivePerl-5.8/html.
On Windows, the standard documentation along with Windows-specific
Perl documentation is installed in HTML format, and is accessible from
the "Start" menu.
Updated versions of the HTML documentation will always be available at
the ActiveState website:
[Link]
Reporting Problems
Please report any bugs you encounter with this release in the
ActiveState bug database:
[Link]
If you do not have web access, reports can be also sent via email to
ActivePerl-Bugs@[Link]. Please be sure to include detailed
information about the platform in your message.
As far as possible, please ensure that there is enough information in
the report to reproduce the bug elsewhere. It also helps to submit a
minimal test case that exhibits the bug.