do CPAN authors know the minimum perl required for their modules?
I would hope so.
Really? It seems like kind of a lot to ask every CPAN author. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can think of two ways one would know the minimum version of perl required for their module:
- Know the details of each perl version well enough to predict what features their code uses will break and when those features appeared
- Try their module out on each successive old version until they reach one that breaks
Neither of which seem like viable options for the majority of CPAN contributors. Now, I would hope most authors know at least one version that their module works on -- that is, the version it was developed against. But that is not the minimum version.