From: Michael G Schwern [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 02:30:27PM +0100, Paul Marquess wrote:
> > Is there any way out of this "maze of twisty little passages"?
>
> Install File::Spec by hand? Use 5.004_05 which comes with File::Spec?
>
> I think the assumption that Perl will come with File::Spec and Cwd is
> a fairly safe one these days except for pathologically old versions of
> Perl.
In common with most of the people on this list, I've no doubt that I can
easily find a workaround to this problem for my development box -- either
installing by hand or by using older versions of the modules. The point is,
though, I want to make use of Scalar-List-Utils in Compress::Zlib - which
currently works with all Perl's >= 5.004. If I do end up using it, and the
issues I've encountered are not fixed, then the average user who, for
whatever reason, is stuck with a very old version of Perl is going to have a
difficult/impossible time building my module.
This raises the question (which I think you yourself brought up a couple of
weeks ago) about support for ancient-perl. Should module authors continue to
support 5.004* at all?
The problems I'm encountering with Scalar-Util/Cwd/File-Spec seem to imply a
drift towards a de-facto deprecation of support for new modules in
ancient-perl (that was a bit of a mouthful!). This may be caused by updates
to modules that either explicitly drop support for a given ancient-perl
version or inadvertently drop support because they aren't tested on all
versions of Perl.
I guess another way to look at this is to ask why has nobody else noticed
the problem with these modules? Scalar-Util/Cwd/File-Spec are all fairly
common modules. Could the lack of problem reports imply that nobody actually
uses 5.004* anymore?
Paul
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