[Koha-devel] Perl version requirement

[Paul A]

On 2020-06-24 1:15 p.m., Julian Maurice wrote:
> Ah yes, I forgot about Xenial.
> 
> Not sure if it is still supported. 

Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS (Xenial Xerus) was released February 28, 2019, has an 
"End of Standard Support" set at April 2021, and "End of Life" of April 
2024 -- where some package enhancements are ensured up to the first of 
those dates, and *security* is ensured until the second, i.e nearly 
another four years from now.

I obviously cannot speak for more than the organizations with which I am 
involved, but basically we are all keeping c++, php and perl based code 
on 16.04 LTS using Apache, and have moved only python coding to 18.04. 
However, we do use Nginx on 18.04 as a front end, proxying to the 16.04 
back ends. We are beginning to look at 20.04, but first impressions of 
the transition are slightly painful.

As Mark mentions below, Xenial uses Perl 5.22.1-9ubuntu0.6. I understand 
that the "1-9ubuntu0.6" denotes some fifty patches and fixes on top of 
"basic 5.22" but not amounting to 5.24. Just for completeness, 18.04 
uses perl 5.26, and 20.04 comes with perl 5.30.  However, from what I 
have heard, the perl 5 branch has very few deprecated, let alone 
removed, details, so backwards compatibility is on a fairly firm 
footing. In fact, a quick look at 5.22 and 5.26 show very much the same 
patches, but of course this may not apply to non-core modules.

Best -- Paul



The thing is, depending on where you
> look, you find different informations:
> 
> In the latest release notes:
> 
> - 20.05.01 says that the recommended environments are Debian stretch, 
> Debian buster or Ubuntu bionic, and requires Perl 5.10
> - 19.11.07 says that the recommended environments are Debian jessie, 
> Debian stretch, Debian buster or Ubuntu bionic and requires Perl 5.10
> - 19.05.12 says the the recommended environements are Debian stretch or 
> Ubuntu bionic, and requires Perl 5.24 (it's strange that an older 
> version of Koha require a newer version of Perl)
> 
> On Jenkins, there is a "supported" tab that includes Ubuntu xenial, 
> bionic and focal, and Debian jessie, stretch and buster.
> 
> So it is not very clear.
> Maybe we can include that information in Koha's source (in README ?) and 
> make it the "single source of truth" ?
> 
> Le 24/06/2020 à 18:40, Mark Tompsett a écrit :
>> Greetings,
>>
>> I apologize if this is a dumb question, but do we support Xenial 
>> (Ubuntu 16.04) still? If so, then Julian Maurice's suggestion is a 
>> little over. Xenial has Perl 5.22 in it. If we don't support Xenial, 
>> then +1 for his suggestion of 5.24 as the Perl version to use.
>>
>> GPML,
>> Mark Tompsett
>>
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>>
>