Horton

Re: PL_stashcache, or, what's our minimum Perl version?

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Tels" <nospam-pg-abuse@bloodgate.com>
Cc: "Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2017-08-01T16:51:52Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
"Tels" <nospam-pg-abuse@bloodgate.com> writes:
> So, is the goal you are trying to achive here to be able to say "You need
> Perl 5.8.3; plus Module XYZ in vABC if you want point 2, otherwise skip
> this step" instead of saying "You need Perl 5.10.1?"?

I mainly want to be sure that if we say "it runs on 5.8.3", that's not a
lie.  The fact that some test scripts need a newer version of Test::More
seems like a detail that can be left out.  In the (quite improbable) case
that someone runs into that situation in the field, the error message that
they'll get is clear enough, and they should be able to figure out how to
fix it without help from our docs.  Anyone who's running a 15-year-old
Perl installation has probably had to upgrade some of the modules before.

But in reality, only developers are ever going to use --enable-tap-tests
in the first place, so it's largely moot.  What I was really annoyed by
was that PL/Perl failed to build and/or pass regression tests on allegedly
supported Perl versions, and that's sorted now.

			regards, tom lane

Commits

  1. Adjust configure to insist on Perl version >= 5.8.3.

  2. Further improve consistency of configure's program searching.

  3. Doc: specify that the minimum supported version of Perl is 5.8.3.

  4. Record full paths of programs sought by "configure".

  5. Abandon the use of Perl's Safe.pm to enforce restrictions in plperl, as it is