MacPerl 5.6.1 Released

It's been over four years since a new MacPerl has been released, and it has been at least five years since MacPerl has been updated to the latest perl source (at the time, perl 5.004).

So today, we reset the counter with MacPerl 5.6.1r1.

It is based on the most recent release of perl, version 5.6.1. It is updated to the latest version of GUSI (the library that provides sockets and POSIX to MacPerl), supplying faster network access and more functions.

All of the changes to the perl core required for MacPerl have been fed back into the main perl source repository, in both the 5.6 branch and the current 5.7/5.8 development trunk. So when perl 5.8 is released, MacPerl will compile from those sources.

So what else has changed?

* MacPerl can now be built entirely using freely available software
* Many more modules included, such as Mac::Glue, all of cpan-mac
(Compress::Zlib, Archive::Tar, etc.) for installing modules, Storable,
Time::HiRes, and more
* New and improved installer that only downloads and updates the pieces
needed for the specific installation
* Many bugs fixed
* New Shuck: faster, more reliable, more configurable, updated look,
updated parsing

For complete details of the changes, including incompatible changes, see the macperldelta document, included with MacPerl.

http://dev.macperl.org/docs/macperldelta.html

To get MacPerl, download either the web installer or the full installer (preferably the web installer) and run it. It can be fetched SourceForge.net, as well as from CPAN.

http://sf.net/projects/macperl/
http://www.cpan.org/ports/mac/

Note that the CPAN sites might take a day or two to update. For more information about downloading and installing, see the README.

http://dev.macperl.org/docs/macperlreadme.html

For more information on development, including bug reporting and source, see the MacPerl Development Site.

http://dev.macperl.org/

For the MacPerl mailing lists, see the Perl Lists site.

http://lists.perl.org/

MacPerl 5.6.1r1 is the result of well over a year of development. Matthias Neeracher, the author of MacPerl has produced much of the code, including GUSI. Thomas Wegner added a great many patches, including the overhaul of Shuck. Gurusamy Sarathy and Jarkko Hietaniemi helped integrate the MacPerl with the perl 5.6 and perl 5.8 sources, as well as fixed various bugs and portability issues. Many other people helped in many other ways as well.

Thanks, and have fun,

--
Chris Nandor pudge@pobox.com http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network pudge@osdn.com http://osdn.com/