Careful. Only a few of the XS modules have already been ported to 5.8, — meaning: compiled into a DLL, and made available to the public as a neat PPM package. Last time I looked, there was no HTML::Parser, no XML::Parser (hmm... that one may come with Perl — it does), no Bit::Vector, no Date::Calc, no DBI, no DBD::* modules that are not pure perl... the list goes on and on. Look here to see which are available. Now, what is available, looks like a long list already, but I do think that virtually none of those are XS based. Hey, if some of the most important ones (?) are missing, it is not looking too good...

Even most several of the Win32 API based modules are not available yet, not even the very basic Win32::API.

I can't say I'm particularily happy about the current situation. Bottom line: if you need any of those modules, don't upgrade. Not unless you have usable copy of Visual C.

Update: Seems I was a bit hasty to jump to a conclusion. Some of these modules do come with the basic install. That is the case for HTML::Parser and XML::Parser, but still not for DBI, DBD::*, Date::Calc, Bit::Vector. No, Win32::API is not included, but many other Win32::* modules are. That's odd... Tk is included, but Win32::GUI isn't.

The repository is not a complete list, check out what is in the basic distribution. Unfortunately, it looks like you have to install it to find out which ones are included — that's one problem with .msi packages. Unless there is a list somewhere on Activestate's site...?

Update: At least some DBI related modules are available from the XMLPROJ repository. From a dbi-users mailing list message from Ilya Sterin:

Here is the deal. www.xmlproj.com/PPM now has perl 5.6 and perl 5.8 PPMs. ppm utility does not have to take the full URL. All you really have to do, is add the www.xmlproj.com/PPM or any other respository to your PPM database, like this...

ppm add respository XMLPROJ http://www.xmlproj.com/PPM/
[download]

If you're looking for recent binary ports for DBI and some of the DBD::* modules, this is the repository to look at first, even if it's for 5.6. For 5.8, at this moment, you can find DBI, DBD::ODBC, and DBD::Oracle. I would expect DBD::mysql to appear here first, too, eventually.