Moin, On Wednesday 05 April 2006 20:46, H.Merijn Brand wrote: > On Wed, 5 Apr 2006 18:30:33 +0200, Tels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Moin, > > On Wednesday 05 April 2006 06:57, Adam Kennedy wrote: > > > chromatic wrote: > > > > On Tuesday 04 April 2006 10:32, Tels wrote: > > [snip] > > > > I'm trying to figure out why I've been sending patches to p5p for > > > > about five years now if people complain when I take advantage of > > > > the bugs they fix. At some point, it would be nice if people > > > > were to use software released this millennium. > > > Ever written software for government? > > > > Yes. And I don't know which parts of the mystical government you > > speak off, but people everywhere are pretty pissed of when they have > > to work with 10 year old software. > > We *only* have local government as customers, and they get *my* perl, > installed in *our* tree. Of course my perl includes defined-or :)
:o) > > Hell, there are problems getting hardware that still runs that old > > stuff. > > > :) > > One customer ran production on a system so old that they didn't dare to > reboot it, because they were affraid it was not going to boot again. > OK, that was 6 years ago, but still, government is a strange customer. You will laugh, but the most common hardware failure occurs due to power-down/power-up cycles. Systems run happy for months, even years, shut them down, let them cool, boot them up, and the HD, power supply or mainboard is dead. That's why you use a lot and big UPS. Government indeed is strange. Some parts of it can't buy ink for the printer, let alone a new HD, others blow a million on a new data center. Usually, both parts sit in the same building :-P > > > It's routine to be required to offer a 10 year support period. > > Yes, but that does not mean that you need to upgrade the installation > > with "the-latest-foo-bar-from-cpan-which-just-breaks-on-5.004". You > > just keep the system as it is and patch when breakage really occurs. > > :) > > I don't care if their default perl breaks down. That would be their > fault. As long as they don't break mine. Perl has the advantage of not > being tied to "this product *must* be installed in /usr (and yes, we > *do* have a third party that still sets that requirement for their > product), symlinks to the rescue. Yeah, but if you install your own Perl, then the modules you use can work with it, hence there is no requirement for Foo-Bar to actually run under 5.004. That was my main point :D It's like saying that $LatestGame must run under Win95, just because there are a few people who insist that they use it. I hate upgrade cycles as much as everyone else, but even more annoying are people stuck in the last decade :D > > > This comes up more often that you might think. > > > > > > And so as my gold standard for back-compatability, I use 10 years. > > > A decade is a nice round number. > > > > Ugh - but at least we don't have 16 fingers :) > > 5.8.3 is the minimum to accept for me, and it should have defined-or I use 5.8.0 as minimum, but for unicode I think it should be 5.8.1 - but I am unsure. COuld you give a reason for why specifically 5.8.3? best wishes, Tels -- Signed on Wed Apr 5 23:17:38 2006 with key 0x93B84C15. Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/ PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email. "helft den armen vögeln" -- gegen kleinschreibung
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