ActivePerl 1007 -- Release Notes

Welcome, and thank you for downloading ActivePerl. This release corresponds to P
erl version 5.10.1.
The following platforms are supported by this release:
AIX 5.1 or later (rs6000)
HP-UX: 11.00 or later (PA-RISC)
Linux: glibc 2.3 or later (x86 and x64)
Mac OS X 10.4 or later (x86 and powerpc)
Solaris 2.8 or later (sparc, 32 and 64 bit)
Solaris 10 or later (x86)
Windows 2000 (x86)
Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7 (x86 and x64)
For a chronological list of changes included in this and past releases, see the
ActivePerl 5.10 Change Log.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incompatibilities
Perl 5.10 is not binary compatible with Perl 5.8. In particular, do not attempt
to use extensions or PPM packages built for ActivePerl 800 series builds with Ac
tivePerl 1000 series builds and vice versa. Please check Incompatible Changes in
the perl5100delta manpage for known source level incompatibilities between the
Perl 5.10 releases and the earlier releases in the Perl 5.8 series.
In addition there are a number of incompatible changes between Perl 5.10.0 and P
erl 5.10.1, especially in the semantics of the switch statement and the smart-ma
tch operator. Read about them (and other compatibility issues) in Incompatible C
hanges in the perl5101delta manpage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Known Issues
PPM
There are some known outstanding issues with the PPM 4 client:
The PPM state database (containing configuration information for repositories, v
iew options in the GUI, and repository state) is not imported from previous inst
allations.
If you have added custom PPM 4 repositories in previous ActivePerl releases then
you should reconfigure them manually with ppm repo add ... or in the GUI. The r
epository state will be automatically re-synchronized when PPM is run.
Post install scripts for packages installed from the GUI will not be able to rec
eive non-default answers for any prompts it might produce. Packages that need no
n-default answers must be installed with the command line version of ppm.
List icons will sometimes not repaint properly after scrolling under X11. This d
oes not affect the Windows and Mac OS X builds.
Running sudo ppm ... the first time ppm is invoked from a regular user account o
n Unix will create a root owned state database. This effectively makes the datab
ase read-only when running ppm without sudo, and might manifest itself as Applic
ation Error dialogs when running the GUI. Workaround is to run sudo chown -R $US
ER ~/.ActivePerl once to fix up ownership of the state database.

AIX
GNU tar is required to extract the ActivePerl tarball into the filesystem. A pre
compiled version of GNU tar for AIX 5L can be found here:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/os/aix/linux/toolbox/download.html
You can also get the source package for GNU tar from:
http://www.gnu.org/
The reloc_perl script does not correctly update the perl-dynamic executable. The
workaround is to install directly from the tarball into the new location.

Solaris
GNU tar is required to extract the ActivePerl tarball into the filesystem. A pre
compiled version of GNU tar for Solaris is available from:
http://www.sunfreeware.com/
You can also get the source package for GNU tar from:
http://www.gnu.org/
Mac OS X
Perl library paths, and thus PPM Areas, defined in the shell by the PERL5LIB env
ironment variable are not available to PPM when it is launched by clicking the P
PM icon in OS X. To to make this variable available in the OS X GUI, add an entr
y similar to the following to ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist:
<key>PERL5LIB</key>
<string>/path/to/perl/lib</string>
Running sudo ppm or sudo ppm gui does not start up the GUI with root privileges.
Use ppm as a command line tool with sudo.

Windows
The installer cannot create IIS script mappings on Windows Vista or Windows Serv
er 2008.
The fork() emulation has known limitations. See the perlfork manpage for a detai
led summary. In particular, fork() emulation will not work correctly with extens
ions that are either not thread-safe, or maintain internal state that cannot be
cloned in the pseudo-child process. This caveat currently applies to extensions
such as Tk and Storable.
It seems that some people are having problems with the ActivePerl MSI installer.
The first thing to note is that you CANNOT install ActivePerl 5.10 over an olde
r version of ActivePerl based on 5,8, 5.6 or 5.005, such as build 822 or any oth
er 800, 600 or 500 series build. We have determined that some of these problems
are due to other installations of Perl that may be pointed at by something in th
e environment.
The sure-fire solution is to make absolutely certain that no other installations
of Perl are on the target machine. Realizing that this is not always possible,
you can follow these steps to ensure the other installations will not interfere.
Stop the "Windows Installer" service. This can be accomplished from the command
prompt using the following command:
c:\> net stop "Windows Installer"
Temporarily remove or rename PERLLIB and PERL5LIB environment variables in the s
ystem environment.
Temporarily remove or rename the following registry values:
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] lib = <directory> (REG_SV)
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] sitelib = <directory> (REG_SV)
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] lib-<PerlVersion> = <directory> (REG_SV
)
[\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] sitelib-<PerlVersion> = <directory>(REG
_SV)
Proceed with the installation.
Once the installation has completed successfully, the above actions may be undon
e although restoring the environment variables or the registry values may interf
ere with the proper operation of your new ActivePerl installation. In order to p
erform all of the above steps, you will need to have Administrative privileges o
n the target machine. If you do not have the required privileges you should cont
act you Administrator.

Further Information
The Perl distribution comes with extensive documentation. On Unix platforms, all
the standard documentation is installed as man pages under the Perl install loc
ation. The location of the man pages may need to be added to the MANPATH environ
ment variable in order to access them. For example, in the C shell:
% setenv MANPATH /opt/ActivePerl-5.10/man:$MANPATH
The documentation is installed in HTML format on all platforms. If ActivePerl wa
s installed in /opt/ActivePerl-5.10 then the HTML documentation would be located
in /opt/ActivePerl-5.10/html.
On Windows, the standard documentation along with Windows-specific Perl document
ation is installed in HTML format, and is accessible from the "Start" menu.
Updated versions of the HTML documentation will always be available at the Activ
eState website:
http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporting Problems
Please report any bugs you encounter with this release in the ActiveState bug da
tabase:
http://bugs.activestate.com
If you do not have web access, reports can be also sent via email to ActivePerl-
Bugs@ActiveState.com. Please be sure to include detailed information about the p
latform in your message.
As far as possible, please ensure that there is enough information in the report
to reproduce the bug elsewhere. It also helps to submit a minimal