perl 5.16.0 released!

[Tux]

  All I have is a voice
  To undo the folded lie,
  The romantic lie in the brain
  Of the sensual man-in-the-street
  And the lie of Authority
  Whose buildings grope the sky:
  There is no such thing as the State
  And no one exists alone;
  Hunger allows no choice
  To the citizen or the police;
  We must love one another or die.

    -- W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

The Perl 5 development team is gratified to announce the release of
Perl 5.16.0!

You will soon be able to download Perl 5.16.0 from your favorite CPAN
mirror or find it at:

https://metacpan.org/release/RJBS/perl-5.16.0/

SHA1 digests for this release are:

  56fb8097ff3e472f7a057848b37cb9ede7662b74  perl-5.16.0.tar.bz2
  d21de2b409d99440047a4e67a61f0a781ea2f66b  perl-5.16.0.tar.gz

You can find a full list of changes in the file "perldelta.pod" locate
+d in
the "pod" directory inside the release and on the web.

Perl 5.16.0 represents approximately 12 months of development since Pe
+rl
5.14.0 and contains approximately 590,000 lines of changes across 2,50
+0
files from 139 authors.

Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant
community of users and developers.  The following people are known to
have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.16.0:

Aaron Crane, Abhijit Menon-Sen, Abigail, Alan Haggai Alavi, Alberto
Simőes, Alexandr Ciornii, Andreas König, Andy Dougherty, Aristotle
Pagaltzis, Bo Johansson, Bo Lindbergh, Breno G. de Oliveira, brian d
foy, Brian Fraser, Brian Greenfield, Carl Hayter, Chas. Owens,
Chia-liang Kao, Chip Salzenberg, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Christian
Hansen, Christopher J. Madsen, chromatic, Claes Jacobsson, Claudio
Ramirez, Craig A. Berry, Damian Conway, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Darin
McBride, Dave Rolsky, David Cantrell, David Golden, David Leadbeater,
David Mitchell, Dee Newcum, Dennis Kaarsemaker, Dominic Hargreaves,
Douglas Christopher Wilson, Eric Brine, Father Chrysostomos, Florian
Ragwitz, Frederic Briere, George Greer, Gerard Goossen, Gisle Aas,
H.Merijn Brand, Hojung Youn, Ian Goodacre, James E Keenan, Jan Dubois,
Jerry D. Hedden, Jesse Luehrs, Jesse Vincent, Jilles Tjoelker, Jim
Cromie, Jim Meyering, Joel Berger, Johan Vromans, Johannes Plunien, Jo
+hn
Hawkinson, John P. Linderman, John Peacock, Joshua ben Jore, Juerd
Waalboer, Karl Williamson, Karthik Rajagopalan, Keith Thompson, Kevin 
+J.
Woolley, Kevin Ryde, Laurent Dami, Leo Lapworth, Leon Brocard, Leon
Timmermans, Louis Strous, Lukas Mai, Marc Green, Marcel Grünauer, Mark
A.  Stratman, Mark Dootson, Mark Jason Dominus, Martin Hasch, Matthew
Horsfall, Max Maischein, Michael G Schwern, Michael Witten, Mike
Sheldrake, Moritz Lenz, Nicholas Clark, Niko Tyni, Nuno Carvalho, Pau
Amma, Paul Evans, Paul Green, Paul Johnson, Perlover, Peter John Ackla
+m,
Peter Martini, Peter Scott, Phil Monsen, Pino Toscano, Rafael
Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Robin Barke
+r,
Rodolfo Carvalho, Salvador Fandińo, Sam Kimbrel, Samuel Thibault, Shaw
+n
M Moore, Shigeya Suzuki, Shirakata Kentaro, Shlomi Fish, Sisyphus,
Slaven Rezic, Spiros Denaxas, Steffen Müller, Steffen Schwigon, Stephe
+n
Bennett, Stephen Oberholtzer, Stevan Little, Steve Hay, Steve Peters,
Thomas Sibley, Thorsten Glaser, Timothe Litt, Todd Rinaldo, Tom
Christiansen, Tom Hukins, Tony Cook, Vadim Konovalov, Vincent Pit,
Vladimir Timofeev, Walt Mankowski, Yves Orton, Zefram, Zsbán Ambrus,
Ćvar Arnfjörđ Bjarmason.

The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically
generated from version control history.  In particular, it does not
include the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who
reported issues to the Perl bug tracker.

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN
modules included in Perl's core.  We're grateful to the entire CPAN
community for helping Perl to flourish.

For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors,
please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution.

We expect to release Perl 5.16.1 on or around June 20, 2012, addressin
+g
significant bugs found after this release.  The 5.17 development branc
+h
will open shortly, and a 5.17.0 release will follow within the month,
with regular monthly releases following on the 20th of each month.  Th
+e
next major stable release of Perl 5, version 5.18.0, should appear in
May 2013.

-- 
rjbs

[moritz]

As always, see perldelta for a list of changes. I for one welcome our new 5.16 overlords!

[davido]

RIP perlbot, perlboot, perltooc, and perltoot. I'll miss the sense of personality they embodied.

Welcome perlootut.

[Athanasius]

Clicking the perloot link gives me:

Not Found

The requested URL /perloot.html was not found on this server.

Did you mean perlootut? I found this on CPAN, but not on perldoc, which still doesn’t go above v5.14.2.

Regards,

[davido]

I sure did. Thanks for the head's up. I've fixed the link.

[syphilis]

And, for any interested Windows users, kmx has already released a Strawberry Perl (portable) build of 32bit 5.16.0 with 64bit integer (-Duse_64bit_int).

He provided this link, based on 5.16.0-RC1 ... perhaps that has been updated since (though I don't think there's much difference between RC1 and the final version).

The patches to config.gc, config_H.gc and makefile.mk that he used are here.

Update: And the other Strawberry Perl builds are, of course, here.

Cheers,
Rob

[Anonymous Monk]

I really like the new __SUB__ keyword. Also I love yearly release cycle :)

[ikegami]

On why it's good...

This leaks:

sub outer {
   ...

   my $inner;
   $inner = sub {
      ...
      $inner->(...);
      ...
   };

   $inner->(...);
}

This doesn't:

sub outer {
   ...

   my $inner = sub {
      ...
      __SUB__->(...);
      ...
   };

   $inner->(...);
}

[Tanktalus]

Oh, crap. That explains a bug I was fighting with for a week.

Memory leaks are minor. Compared to guard objects that don't go out of scope at the right time, and hang around too long, having nasty side effects when their DESTROY is called at the wrong time.

[ambrus]

Incidentally, Linux 3.4 was released on the same day. See Human-readable changelog to Linux 3.4 from Linux 3.3.

[jdporter]

The delta page attempts to link to perlapi, but ... (a) the perlapi file for 5.16 doesn't exist (yet?), and (b) at least for 5.14.2, at least as it is rendered on cpan, the perlapi file doesn't exist; the generator script is shown instead. (It should look like perlapi.)

[Anonymous Monk]

perlapi is generated upon compile/install, search.cpan.org never had it for any version of perl

[jbrose]

Thanks for your efforts on PERL

I would like to update from Perl 5.10.1 to Perl 5.16 on Red Hat Linux.
I have tried yum update perl
Apparently 5.10.1 is the latest available by that method.
How might I upgrade our PERL to 5.16 on Red Hat Linux?
Thanks

[chromatic]

Don't upgrade; leave the system Perl alone. You may break your installation if you replace it in place.

Instead use perlbrew to install a separate Perl.