chromatic pointed out:

Perl 5 already has major version number increases, such as from 5.12 to 5.14.

Yes, I can see that, but perl5.14 will run almost any program that perl5.12 ran for you, and you probably appreciate this.

Now suppose, for example, p5p decided it was prudent to deprecate method-name package-name calling syntax. This would mean removing a feature, at least after a transition period with deprecation warnings. The warnings alone would hurt a lot of users of legacy code, who would have expected perl5.(n+2) to be largely consistent with perl5.n. Since p5p tend to be helpful people, they would hesitate to act like that.

Now if there was an opportunity to switch to a greater integer version number of Perl, there should be much more freedom in design decisions, since it seems reasonable to expect more substantial changes with more substantial version number increases.

I would like Perl to benefit from that kind of freedom. I understand that initially this notion was part of what started Perl 6. Of course there would be debate about what exactly would have to go into the new version of the language previously known as Perl 5, but I am sure we could end up with something quite practical.

In reply to Re^2: Next Big Step for Perl 5 by martin
in thread Next Big Step for Perl 5 by martin

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