Re: [RANT] Should we try to keep compatibility with old perl5s?

Shlomi Fish wrote:
> Hi all!
> do you think I was being unreasonable, or should I as a CPAN
> author/maintainer/adopter accommodate for people running old perl5s, in my case 5.10.x and below:
>
>   
Going backwards it becomes more difficult to support an old version, 
along with
older versions having fewer users.

I tested some of my modules back to 5.8.  I didn't test any on 5.6, as 
it was
just too hard to build.  If there was a clamor to support some of my modules
on 5.6, I might ask the reporter to do testing and try to see if I can 
fix something.

Of course this implies only using a 'core perl' that worked on 5.6.x to 
develop
extensions in -- another thing that might cause problems.

Another issue -- how many years ago was the release?

If it is old enough, it might be argued that it is hard to support some 
things
on SW so old, it may have scores of unpatched bugs.

Really though, I can't imagine that *one* answer would work for every 
situation.

OTOH, if the user wants to add support for the old version, you might be 
willing to merge the changes into your source?

Just thinking...

my 4 cents (used to be 2 -- inflation hit).

-l