How it fixes the numerous issues holding back the P5 codebase.

For that we'd have to know what are the numerous issues holding back the P5 codebase. Some in the Monastery seem very keen for a built-in, performant, consistent approach to function signatures so that might be one such issue. Other than that I can't immediately think of any.

The deep magick in it causing difficulty in adding wishlist stuff, the porters having rather different views on back compat, the dearth of qualified and interested developers. The only one regularly here I’m aware of who is qualified to comment on it for real is dave_the_m.

The latter two points aren't really issues with the codebase they are more issues with the personnel in the project. The former I know nothing about (I'm just a user) and can only comment in regards to other projects which have stagnated for technical debt until the only remaining option was a considerable overhaul.

If deep magick is holding back development then perhaps a major rewrite for a new major number bump might be the only way to fix that particular issue.

People will always hold different views on back compat and nothing will change that.

Again perhaps a major rewrite for a new major number bump might just be the best hope of attracting more qualified and interested developers?

As Jenda hinted, the main reason for p5p (who else?) to release version 7 of Perl is to end the impression that "Perl6" is a newer version of Perl than the current 5.x one.

They wouldn't have to add a single feature or solve a single issue for that to be a win.

They could do it in place of 5.30 and that would be that.

And it's hardly a dead horse when the leading "Perl6" promoter begs Larry Wall to endorse it.)

…I don’t see this confusion in the marketplace, only an increased interest in the language by name and the actual language which I agree is still Perl5; that’s the only conclusion anyone comes to right now. It’s a dead horse here on PM without a meaningful audience. Rename could be great; I’m not even sure at this point. It’s mostly up to TimToady. Perl7… that’s its own can of worms and without a major new feature or two I think it would be seen as confusing, scary (oh, we’re not sure our code will be compatible with 7!), or a shallow marketing ploy and do more harm than good.

Update: I was glad you posted the item and generally agree. I didn’t mean to sound otherwise; just wasn’t happy to see the thread revived.

Yes, releasing Perl as Perl 7 without renaming the failed experiment at yet another end-all-be-all language would indeed be confusing, scary and pointless and it would help nothing without updating pages with information about that ugly overdesigned overcomplicated behemoth with the new name so that they do not come up in searches for "perl" and confuse the heck out of people with incompatible syntax.

The only thing that makes any kind of sense is a public announcement that "Hey, guys, we tried to create a new version, but ended up creating a new language. Lets fix the fsck up, give the new language its own proper, separately searchable, name, skip a version and go forward."

Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.