Hello Monks!

It's been a good long while since I've put out a new CPAN module, containing entirely new code. Feels good, except I'm very much overthinking which use 5.0xx; Perl version to require. I'm well aware that the overly reductive answer is generally "the lowest Perl version that runs your code," but that logic falls apart when the code hasn't all been written yet. I certainly could make it work on good ol' 5.005_03, but only after making several uncomfortable SCM concessions in style, testing, core modules, CPAN dependencies, security, and generally not having very much fun in the process. And, no, I'm not actually planning on supporting 20+ year old Perls in brand new code.

Are there recent stats or census data on Perl versions in use in the wild? Devs integrating my code may well be using a recent Perl(s) via perlbrew, but my target deployment audience will very likely either be using system Perl on one Linux/BSD distro or another (probably mostly on "long term support" releases that run older, stable versions), or one of the Windows Perls, so I guess I could look up the system Perl versions of the top 5 Linux distros, figure out which system Perl version they're running, and go with the minimum, for a reasonable start. But has anyone already gathered similar data in the past couple of years or so? I couldn't find anything close (or recent) but my Google-fu might be off today.

But that's just my vaguely specific case. I'm also interested in general perspectives on how you've all chosen min Perl versions for your modules, even if your situation differed from mine.

In reply to Determining minimum Perl version for new module by wanna_code_perl

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