I come seeking the opinions of other monks (for I know that we are an opionated bunch).

A while back, I recall asking, or piping up in a thread, about the usability of 5.6.1 vs 5.8.0, module support differences between the two, and which to put in production. Within the next few days I am going to begin persuading management (and my fellow co-workers) to let me begin my newest project with perl + apache + mod_perl and I would like some input from my brethren as to how to proceed with this.

Some questions that I had are:

Those are just some ideas that are buzzing around in my head. How long does it normally take a language to hit a "production stable" status?

If you make something idiot-proof, eventually someone will make a better idiot.
I am that better idiot.

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Re: perl 5.8.0 (slight return)
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Oct 31, 2002 at 12:14 UTC
    Is perl 5.8.0 production ready?
    I'm not sure what you mean by this question. 5.8.0 is 5.8.0 and will always be 5.8.0. The 5.8.0 in two years is the same 5.8.0 as the one that was released. If it isn't "production ready", it will never be.

    Perhaps you mean, "can I use it in production?". See below.

    Are there flaws/support issues big enough to make you think twice?
    Yes. But they were there with 5.6.x too. There are known bugs and problems with 5.8.0. There are known bugs and problems with 5.6.1 too. And with 5.005_03. With every version of Perl. Whether the problems with 5.8.0 are serious for your production environment, we cannot tell. You will have to use your test environment to find out.
    Will I have any module problems?
    Maybe, maybe not. Before 5.8.0 came out, people have tried out modules, with particular focus on the most popular CPAN modules. Bugs have been found and fixed. Modules have been patched. But were all problems found? Unlikely.
    Is perl 5.8.0 threading enough incentive to switch over?
    I don't use threads myself, but from what I here over and over again at the local Perl Mongers meetings is that 5.8.0 threads are better than 5.6.x threads, but they still suck too hard to be very useful. They take up a lot of resources.

    Abigail

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Re: perl 5.8.0 (slight return)
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Oct 31, 2002 at 17:43 UTC
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Re: perl 5.8.0 (slight return)
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Oct 31, 2002 at 22:20 UTC
    On a related topic, that inspires me as a module writer. I use ActiveState, and if there are problems with some modules on 5.8, I'd like to give it a spin at least for testing.

    So, long before ActiveState moves to it, is there a binary distribution of 5.8 for Win32?

    —John

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