ActivePerl 828 -- Release Notes
    Welcome, and thank you for downloading ActivePerl. This release
    corresponds to Perl version 5.8.9.

    The following platforms are supported by this release:

    *  AIX 5.1 or later (rs6000)

    *  HP-UX: 11.00 or later (PA-RISC)

    *  Linux: glibc 2.3 or later (x86 and x64)

    *  Mac OS X 10.4 or later (x86 and powerpc)

    *  Solaris 2.8 or later (sparc, 32 and 64 bit)

    *  Solaris 10 or later (x86)

    *  Windows 2000 (x86)

    *  Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7 (x86 and x64)

For a chronological list of changes included in this and past releases,
see the ActivePerl 5.8 Change Log.
Incompatibilities
    Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with Perl 5.6. In particular, do not
    attempt to use extensions or PPM packages built for ActivePerl 600
    series builds with ActivePerl 800 series builds and vice versa. Please
    check "Incompatible Changes" in perl58delta for known source level
    incompatibilities between the Perl 5.8 releases and the earlier
    releases in the Perl 5.6 series.

    You may also want to check "Incompatible Changes" in perl581delta,
    "Incompatible Changes" in perl582delta, and "Incompatible Changes" in
    perl584delta, for additional minor incompatible changes made in Perl
    5.8.1, Perl 5.8.2 and Perl 5.8.4 respectively.

    The following incompatibilities described below do not apply to HP-UX:
    Changed order in @INC, simplified directory structure, PPM4. These
    changes will be implemented for HP-UX in ActivePerl 5.10.

    The order of the directories in @INC has changed since build 817 of
    ActivePerl. The $PREFIX/site/lib directory is now searched for modules
    before $PREFIX/lib. This means that core modules might be shadowed by
    what is installed locally and these updates might bring
    incompatibilities that break applications only tested against the
    original core module.

    All modules that ActivePerl bundles in addition to the core modules
    are now installed in $PREFIX/lib. In ActivePerl build 817 and earlier,
    these were installed in $PREFIX/site/lib.

    The $Config{siteprefix} is now $PREFIX/site. In ActivePerl build 817
    and earlier, it was just $PREFIX and $Config{sitelib} compensated by
    introducing the site level. As a consequence programs included with
    packages installed into the "site" area now get installed in
    $PREFIX/site/bin. In ActivePerl build 817 and earlier, these were
    installed in $PREFIX/bin. Another consequence of the
    $Config{siteprefix} update is that modules configured and built with
    "perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=..." are now installed directly in the lib
    directory of the given "PREFIX".

  PPM version 4
    PPM version 4 differs from version 3 (distributed with ActivePerl
    build 817 and earlier) in the following ways:

    *  Running "ppm" without arguments now bring up a graphical user
       interface; there is a separate program called "ppm-shell" that
       gives you an interface similar to the old console shell.

    *  The output format of most commands have changed. Scripts that parse
       the output of "ppm" need to change.

    *  "ppm describe" only takes a *number* as argument. The other forms
       are not supported.

    *  "ppm install" without argument does not install a default package
       and does not support the *range* argument. The "--follow" and
       "--no-follow" options are not supported.

    *  "ppm profile", "ppm properties", "ppm set", and "ppm target"
       commands are not supported.

    *  "ppm repo up" and "ppm repo down" commands are not supported.

    *  "ppm search" does not support the *field*=*glob* syntax.

    *  SOAP-based repositories are no longer supported.

Known Issues
  PPM
    *  The PPM state database (containing configuration information for
       repositories, view options in the GUI, and repository state) is not
       imported from previous installations.

       If you have added custom PPM 4 repositories with ActivePerl
       5.8.8.819, you should reconfigure them manually with "ppm repo add
       ..." or in the GUI. The repository state will be automatically
       re-synchronized when PPM is run.

    *  Post install scripts for packages installed from the GUI will not
       be able to receive non-default answers for any prompts it might
       produce. Packages that need non-default answers must be installed
       with the command line version of ppm.

    *  List icons will sometimes not repaint properly after scrolling
       under X11. This does not affect the Windows and Mac OS X builds.

    *  Running "sudo ppm ..." the first time "ppm" is invoked from a
       regular user account on Unix will create a *root* owned state
       database. This effectively makes the database read-only when
       running "ppm" without "sudo", and might manifest itself as
       Application Error dialogs when running the GUI. Workaround is to
       run "sudo chown -R $USER ~/.ActivePerl" once to fix up ownership of
       the state database.

    *  No PPM GUI for the 64 bit versions of ActivePerl.

  AIX
    *  GNU tar is required to extract the ActivePerl tarball into the
       filesystem. A precompiled version of GNU tar for AIX 5L can be
       found here:

           http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/os/aix/linux/toolbox/download.html

       You can also get the source package for GNU tar from:

           http://www.gnu.org/

    *  The reloc_perl script does not correctly update the perl-dynamic
       executable. The workaround is to install directly from the tarball
       into the new location.

  Solaris
    *  GNU tar is required to extract the ActivePerl tarball into the
       filesystem. A precompiled version of GNU tar for Solaris is
       available from:

           http://www.sunfreeware.com/

       You can also get the source package for GNU tar from:

           http://www.gnu.org/

    *  The suidperl executable is not included in this package due to
       potential security issues. If you wish to use suidperl in your
       installation, we recommend building Perl from source. The source
       code for ActivePerl is available at:

           http://www.ActiveState.com

  Mac OS X
    *  Perl library paths, and thus PPM Areas, defined in the shell by the
       PERL5LIB environment variable are not available to PPM when it is
       launched by clicking the PPM icon in OS X. To to make this variable
       available in the OS X GUI, add an entry similar to the following to
       ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist:

        <key>PERL5LIB</key>
        <string>/path/to/perl/lib</string>

    *  Running "sudo ppm" or "sudo ppm gui" does not start up the GUI with
       *root* privileges. Use "ppm" as a command line tool with "sudo".

  Windows
    *  The fork() emulation has known limitations. See perlfork for a
       detailed summary. In particular, fork() emulation will not work
       correctly with extensions that are either not thread-safe, or
       maintain internal state that cannot be cloned in the pseudo-child
       process. This caveat currently applies to extensions such as Tk and
       Storable.

    *  It seems that some people are having problems with the ActivePerl
       MSI installer. The first thing to note is that you CANNOT install
       ActivePerl 5.8 over an older version of ActivePerl based on 5.6 or
       5.005, such as build 633 or any other 600 or 500 series build. We
       have determined that some of these problems are due to other
       installations of Perl that may be pointed at by something in the
       environment.

       The sure-fire solution is to make absolutely certain that no other
       installations of Perl are on the target machine. Realizing that
       this is not always possible, you can follow these steps to ensure
       the other installations will not interfere.

       1   Stop the "Windows Installer" service. This can be accomplished
           from the command prompt using the following command:

               c:\> net stop "Windows Installer"

       2   Temporarily remove or rename PERLLIB and PERL5LIB environment
           variables in the system environment.

       3   Temporarily remove or rename the following registry values:

               [\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] lib = <directory> (REG_SV)
               [\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] sitelib = <directory> (REG_SV)
               [\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] lib-<PerlVersion> = <directory> (REG_SV)
               [\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl] sitelib-<PerlVersion> = <directory>(REG_SV)

       4   Proceed with the installation.

       Once the installation has completed successfully, the above actions
       may be undone although restoring the environment variables or the
       registry values may interfere with the proper operation of your new
       ActivePerl installation. In order to perform all of the above
       steps, you will need to have Administrative privileges on the
       target machine. If you do not have the required privileges you
       should contact you Administrator.

       The following Microsoft knowledge base articles may be helpful in
       solving MSI problems:

       Q236597 - OFF2000: Error Message: The Installation Package Could
       Not Be Opened ...
           http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q236/5/97.ASP

       Q224094 - OFF2000: Error Message: This Application Requires the
       Windows Installer to Run
           http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/0/94.ASP

       Q247532 - Works 2000 Err Msg: Installer Terminated Prematurely
           http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q247/5/32.ASP

       "Error 1303. The installer has insufficient privileges..." Running
       Office Setup
           http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q228/6/58.ASP

       Error Message: Error 1316 Running Setup for Admin Installation
           http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q228/5/92.ASP

       Error 1327 Invalid Drive During Office Installation
           http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q217/6/66.ASP

    *  On Windows 9x, the system must be rebooted for the PATH environment
       variable to take effect.

    *  On Windows 9x, the PATH environment variable settings are not
       removed after an uninstall.

  Further Information
    The Perl distribution comes with extensive documentation. On Unix
    platforms, all the standard documentation is installed as man pages
    under the Perl install location. The location of the man pages may
    need to be added to the MANPATH environment variable in order to
    access them. For example, in the C shell:

        % setenv MANPATH /opt/ActivePerl-5.8/man:$MANPATH

    The documentation is installed in HTML format on all platforms. If
    ActivePerl was installed in /opt/ActivePerl-5.8 then the HTML
    documentation would be located in /opt/ActivePerl-5.8/html.

    On Windows, the standard documentation along with Windows-specific
    Perl documentation is installed in HTML format, and is accessible from
    the "Start" menu.

    Updated versions of the HTML documentation will always be available at
    the ActiveState website:

        http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl

Reporting Problems
    Please report any bugs you encounter with this release in the
    ActiveState bug database:

        http://bugs.activestate.com

    If you do not have web access, reports can be also sent via email to
    ActivePerl-Bugs@ActiveState.com. Please be sure to include detailed
    information about the platform in your message.

    As far as possible, please ensure that there is enough information in
    the report to reproduce the bug elsewhere. It also helps to submit a
    minimal test case that exhibits the bug.

