Liz already announced it, but here's the formal announcement made by Jarkko today: 
=head1 Perl 5.8.1 Has Been Released

The Perl 5 developer team is proud to announce the Perl Release 5.8.1,
the first maintenance release of Perl 5.8.0.

Perl 5.8.1 is available via the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network:

   USA

     ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz        (CA)
     http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz                (CA)
     http://mirrors.kernel.org/cpan/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz     (CA)
     ftp://cpan.pair.com/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz       (PA)

    Europe   

     http://mirrors.sunsite.dk/cpan/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz        (Denm
+ark)
     ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz           (Finl
+and)
     ftp://cpan.mirrors.easynet.fr/pub/ftp.cpan.org/src/perl-5.8.1.tar
+.gz
                                                                 (Fran
+ce)
     ftp://ftp.freenet.de/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz         (Germ
+any)
     ftp://download.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz (N
+L)
     ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz (Swed
+en)
     ftp://ftp.flirble.org/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.
+gz (UK)

    Asia                      

     ftp://mirrors.hknet.com/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz             (H
+ong Kong)
     ftp://ftp.ayamura.org/pub/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz           (J
+apan)    
     http://mirror.kr.FreeBSD.org/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz        (S
+. Korea)
     ftp://ftp.nctu.edu.tw/UNIX/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.1.tar.gz     (T
+aiwan)  

The MD5 sum for the perl-5.8.1.tar.gz is 87cf132f1fbf23e780f0b21804643
+8a6,
size 11857808 bytes.

Perl continues to be available on a bewildering array of platforms:
all known UNIX/Linux and Microsoft platforms, and other platforms
having enough POSIX support like BeOS, Cygwin, LynxOS, MPE/iX,       
Netware, OS/2, OS/400, QNX, VMS, VOS, and z/OS.  For MacOS Classic,
the port is maintained separately, follow http://dev.macperl.org/
The full list of platforms is in the pod/perlport.pod file.

This is a source code release, not a binary release.  You will need a
C development environment to build the sources.  Binary releases will 
be made available by various vendors.

The current plan is that there will be both 5.8.2 and 5.6.2.
While the former concentrates on bug fixing and stability, the latter 
concentrates on just getting the 5.6 sources to compile with more
modern compiler and operating system releases.  The work on the 5.9
branch has been started and it will culminate in 5.10.0 some day.  

To build and install Perl, and to find out how to report problems,
please read the INSTALL file, and any relevant README.platform file.

As specified in the licenses for Perl (see the files named Artistic
or Copying), THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

As always, you should conduct an appropriate level of testing before
using any new product in your production environment.

The "perldelta" which describes the most important changes is appended
+    
at the end of this message, but it is also available at:              
+    

http://search.cpan.org/src/JHI/perl-5.8.1/pod/perldelta.pod           
+   

If you missed the Perl 5.8.0 announcement:

http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2002/07/18/580ann/

You can find much more about Perl at:

http://www.perl.org/

Share and Enjoy!

-- Jarkko Hietaniemi, on behalf of the Perl5 Porters

[download]

Abigail

In reply to Perl 5.8.1 by Abigail-II

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