Re: [RFC/PATCH] perl: bump the required Perl version to 5.10.0 from 5.8.0

From: Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>
Date: Dec 24, 2017, 23:08 UTC
Message-ID: <20171224230839.f6r66u37wj4ai3sj@untitled>
In-Reply-To: <871sjkrtrm.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:

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> On Sun, Dec 24 2017, Jeff King jotted:
> > As far as this actual perl change goes, I don't have a strong opinion. I
> > agree it would be nice to eventually move forward, and your reasoning
> > about what constitutes "old" seems sane. But we also don't write much
> > perl in this project these days, and I don't see a lack of modern perl
> > features causing a lot of headaches.

Agreed.

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> Yes, unlike with the curl patches it's not a big PITA to maintain
> compatibility with 5.8, it would just be easier to write new code &
> maintain old code and not have to be on guard about not using features
> one takes for grantend, and maintain compatibility with 5.8 versions of
> core modules.

As one of the more frequent Perl users here (even outside of git.git), I never considered using 5.10+ features at all until now. Maybe 5.8 compatibility is just too ingrained into me and much of the stuff I work on is old and ancient(*).

That said, reading perl5100delta does reveal features such as defined-or and given/when that I might find useful; but I'm also not going to replace existing code to use new features unless there is a clear improvement.

If there's new code people are developing using 5.10; I would not object at all. Otherwise, I don't see compatibility with 5.8 hurts more than it helps.

Maybe we change our docs to say we welcome 5.10 features for new code, but I'm against changing things for the sake of change.

(*) Like this 32-bit laptop from 2005.  Only problem I have with
    it is the noisy fan.