Perl 5 Porters Mailing List Summary: November 10th-15th

Blog:
http://blogs.perl.org/users/sawyer_x/2015/11/perl-5-porters-mailing-list-=
summary-november-10th-15th.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/perl5summaries/status/666178474579771393

                               November 10th-15th

Updates

   Steve Hay has [1]released Perl 5.22.1-RC1!

     The hoary frost has a white sheen Strewn all over my hair, So I thou=
ght
     I was an old man And thought life dealt me fair.

     Yet soon was thawed my old white mane, And I have my black hair agai=
n.
     How I abhor my young fair years, How long to wait for death and bier=
s?

     From setting sun to morning's hue Many a head turns white. Who'll
credit
     it? My hair did not In all this lifelong plight!

     -- Wilhelm M=C3=BCller, trans. Anon., "The Old Head" (No. 14 in Schu=
bert's
     song-cycle, "Winterreise")

   Aaron Crane has updated [2]Perl #119437 on the status of the implicit
   dereference in push to a reference as an unsuccessful experiment.

   [3]ExtUtils::MakeMaker released a new version which reverted many
changes,
   including a commit by Sisyphus to build when sh.exe is in the path (bu=
t
   following cmd.exe) and several changes by mohawk. Therefore, both
Sisyphus
   and Bulk88 resubmitted the "lost" patches to include in EUMM
   (ExtUtils::MakeMaker).

   Tony Cook [4]provides another grant report. About 16 hours spent, 13
   tickets reviewed or worked on, and 5 patches applied.

   Dave Mitchell had merged his fast arithmetic branch. Expect even faste=
r
   basic arithmetic in the next perl version! You can read more about it =
in
   his grant report mentioned below.

   Dave [5]provides a grant report. 98:49 total hours. He worked mainly o=
n
   the aforementioned arithmetic optimizations and the overhaul of the pe=
rl
   context stack and dynamic scope implementation.

   Dave also mentioned he [6]applied for an extension of his Perl core
grant.
   The Perl Foundation is looking for comments. If you want to show
   appreciation (other than a thank-you email to p5p and/or Dave), you ca=
n
   provide comments on the grant extension request.

   Ricardo Signes is making a few CPAN releases ([7]PathTools and
[8]base) in
   order to fix the installation path on perl 5.12 and above.

   Ricardo [9]wants to remove [10]encoding.pm. He asks about any blockers=
.

   Ed Avis noticed the docs sometimes use lookahead and sometimes look-ah=
ead
   (with or without a hyphen) and provided a patch to solve it in [11]Per=
l
   #126608. Tony Cook provided additional comments.

   [12]Module::Metadata is passing several TODO tests, adding more output=
 to
   the build process. Karen Etheridge updates it will be resolved soon.

   Mohammed El-Afifi provided a patch in [13]Perl #126611 for [14]File::F=
ind
   to prevent death in case an empty array is provided.

   Dagfinn Ilmari Manns=C3=A5ker provided a patch in [15]Perl #126609 to =
include
   the error message when [16]IPC::Open3 fails. It was applied by Tony Co=
ok.

   Bulk88 submitted patches in [17]Perl #126632 (which he intends to revi=
se
   further) to add parallelness to Win32/GNUmakefile.

Bugs

  Reported bugs

   [18]Perl #126602, reported by Brian Carpenter, is a fuzzer-found
   double-free segfault caused by the code:

 s//*_=3D0;s|0||;00.y0/e

   Tony Cook debugged and provided submitted a patch for review.

   [19]Perl #126613, reported by Dan Collins, also found by a fuzzer, cau=
ses
   a segfault with the code:

 /(?{s0})|(?{s0:})/|s|||eg|y|||

   [20]Perl #126614, reported by Dan as well by fuzzing, segfaults with:

 /(?{})|(??{U:0})/|s|||g

   [21]Perl #126615, another fuzzer-discovered fuzzer by Dan with the cod=
e:

 00./(?[[0]+()+])/

   This was already fixed by Karl Williamson.

   Andreas J. Koenig opened several tickets for bleadperl breaking the
   following modules:

     * [22]Perl #126621 breaking [23]Tie::DBIx::Class.
     * [24]Perl #126633 breaking [25]ddb.
     * [26]Perl #126635: breaking [27]Data::Integer.
     * [28]Perl #126637: breaking [29]Data::Rmap.

  Resolved bugs

     * [30]Perl #126600: Update perlexperiment for removal of lexical top=
ic
       and autoderef.
     * [31]Perl #124080: DEBUGGING versions of the MARK macros to display
       arity of op and function calls.
     * [32]Perl #124068: Various improvements to [33]DynaLoader.
     * [34]Perl #124069: [35]XSLoader improvement.
     * [36]Perl #126325: Segmentation fault in pack.
     * [37]Perl #126179: Rejected regression report with \N{}.

Discussion

   The ticket [38]Perl #126602 sparked a response from Zefram on a slew o=
f
   problems with stack refcounting. He [39]proposes a way to handle them
   which will require some major overhauls. Dave Mitchell [40]proposes
   another way which wouldn't require the same amount of work and might
   prevent breakage in API.

   A breakage caused by a [41]commit which required a version number bump
   raised a [42]rant by Jarkko Hietaniemi on tests which require such
version
   bumps which conflict with how one might run tests. The thread continue=
s
   [43]here.

   Jarkko also [44]mentioned a Python change suggestion to provide a fast=
er
   directory iterator. This also evolved into a conversation on the stat
   caching feature.

   Steve Hay [45]suggests maintenance releases should also include
   back-ported fixes to features introduced in those stable releases. Aar=
on
   Crane provided a patch to address this in the policy.

   Peter John Acklam [46]wondered about results when working with infinit=
e
   numbers and exponents. Additional details provided by Sisyphus and Gle=
nn
   Golden, it would appear that the computing part of these operations we=
re
   marked as contentious by IEEE during the early 754-2008 process.

References

   1. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232632
   2. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D119437
   3. https://metacpan.org/pod/ExtUtils::MakeMaker
   4. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232524
   5. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232534
   6. http://news.perlfoundation.org/2015/11/grant-extension-request-1.ht=
ml
   7. https://metacpan.org/pod/PathTools
   8. https://metacpan.org/pod/base
   9. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232608
  10. https://metacpan.org/pod/encoding
  11. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126608
  12. https://metacpan.org/pod/Module::Metadata
  13. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126611
  14. https://metacpan.org/pod/File::Find
  15. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126609
  16. https://metacpan.org/pod/IPC::Open3
  17. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126632
  18. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126602
  19. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126613
  20. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126614
  21. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126615
  22. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126621
  23. https://metacpan.org/pod/Tie::DBIx::Class
  24. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126633
  25. https://metacpan.org/pod/ddb
  26. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126635
  27. https://metacpan.org/pod/Data::Integer
  28. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126637
  29. https://metacpan.org/pod/Data::Rmap
  30. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126600
  31. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D124080
  32. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D124068
  33. https://metacpan.org/pod/DynLoader
  34. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D124069
  35. https://metacpan.org/pod/XSLoeader
  36. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126325
  37. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126179
  38. https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3D126602
  39. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232508
  40. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232510
  41. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232612
  42. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232613
  43. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232630
  44. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232553
  45. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232615
  46. http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/232594