Re^7: Make $^V and "my" implicit

[tobyink]

"There now is a "consensus" of what the minimum version of perl is to be supported for the major modules on CPAN (amongst which is DBI). The consensus today is 5.8.1, with an option to move to 5.8.4 when the need arises."

Not really. There is a consensus that the toolchain will support 5.8.1 with the option to move to 5.8.4. The toolchain is the set of modules that are needed to be able to find, download, and install other modules from CPAN - for example, ExtUtils::MakeMaker, Module::Build, Test::Harness, etc.

This is not all "the major modules on CPAN". DBI is not considered to be a toolchain module - however, it does currently support Perl 5.8.1.

There are certainly major modules that do not support 5.8.1. Moose is an obvious one; it requires 5.8.3. Catalyst also requires 5.8.3.

[Tux]

All (big) modules depend on (part of) the toolchain, so the consensus implies what I said.

[tobyink]

That's exactly what I said. All modules depend on the toolchain. That's why it's called the toolchain. The consensus that the toolchain will support 5.8.1 does not imply that other modules must. (They may however have difficulty supporting Perl versions older than 5.8.1, because their install scripts will rely on the toolchain. However, if you write your install scripts carefully, people on, say, Perl 5.6 can make do by installing older versions of key toolchain modules.)