Perl 5.8.0 is released

[Nicholas Clark]

In case you've not read use.perl, slashdot, the london.pm list or anything
else carrying the news, Perl 5.8.0 is out.

It has now escaped to various CPAN mirrors (although not ftp.demon.net last
time I checked.)

However, the fine folks at flirble.org have it on their mirror (located in
Soho, and well connected), accessible via both http and ftp:

    http://cpan.m.flirble.org/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz
    ftp://cpan.m.flirble.org/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.0.tar.gz

You can use IPv6 to get it, or IPv4 if you really must. :-)

$ host -t aaaa cpan.m.flirble.org
cpan.m.flirble.org      CNAME   philes.flirble.org
philes.flirble.org      AAAA    2001:6F8:604:0:0:0:0:1
$ host cpan.m.flirble.org
cpan.m.flirble.org      CNAME   philes.flirble.org
philes.flirble.org      A       194.70.3.50

The release announcement is at http://dev.perl.org/perl5/ in English, Chinese
(both simplified and traditional) Japanese and Korean.

[Time to test how well your browser displays 16 bit fonts]

Nicholas Clark

----- Forwarded message from Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi at iki.fi> -----

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From: Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi at iki.fi>
To: perl5-porters at perl.org
Subject: Perl 5.8.0

    There was the faint sound of footsteps.
    "Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last week,"
    said the low priest.
    There was a sound like the flushing of a very old dry lavatory.
    The footsteps stopped.  The High Priest smiled to himself.
    "Right," he said.  "See your two pebbles and raise you two pebbles."
    The low priest threw down his cards.  "Double Onion," he said.
    The High Priest looked down suspiciously.
    The low priest consulted a scrap of paper.  "That's three hundred
    thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four pebbles you owe me," he said.
    There was the sound of footsteps.  The priests exchanged glances.
    "Haven't had one for poisoned-dart alley for quite some time,"
    said the High Priest.
    "Five says he makes it", said the low priest.  "You're on."
    There was a faint clatter of metal points on stone.
    "It's a shame to take your pebbles."
    There were footsteps again.
    -- Terry Pratchett, "Reaper Man"

This is the Perl 5.8.0.

The official announcement (for use.perl.org, for dev.perl.org/perl5,
comp.lang.perl.announce, etc.) will go out soon as enough mirrors
have picked up the tar.gz.  I'll ask the mirror sites to expedite
their mirrors.  (Yes, please, don't use.perl this yet.)

If your CPAN does not have it yet, you can pick up the release as the
snapshot 17638: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/snap/perl@17638.tgz
(note that this, as snapshots do, unpacks as directory perl/,
not as perl-5.8.0/)

As discussed, the plan is to have a Perl 5.8.1, but not before Perl
5.9.0.  I'll take some time off from p5p, to cool down my "Thanks,
applied" reflexes, and to have a life, but most importantly, to let
Hugo to grab the helm.

My thanks go to:

- Hugo van der Sanden for lacking enough self preservation
  instincts to refuse the Perl 5.9 pumpkinship
  (The pumpking is dead! Long live the pumpking!)

- perl5-porters without whom no Perl release would ever be done

- Perl users on non-mainstream platforms who helped to get Perl
  running from the tiniest PDAs to the most hulking big iron

- Nokia Research Center, Helsinki University of Technology
  Computing Center, and Center for Scientific Computing and FUNET
  for giving me resources to develop and maintain Perl

and last but foremost, my lovely wife Elaine will hopefully be glad to
have me back after two years of virtual widowhood.

<ahnold img="http://www.iki.fi/jhi/vacation.jpg">I need a vacation.</ahnold>

-- 
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen

----- End forwarded message -----

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Chris Benson