ActivePerl 819 -- Release Notes
    Welcome, and thank you for downloading ActivePerl. This release
    corresponds to Perl version 5.8.8.

    Note: ActivePerl 800 series builds are not binary-compatible with the
    older 600 series builds. In particular, do not attempt to use
    extensions or PPM packages built for the 600 series builds with
    ActivePerl 800 series builds and vice versa.

    The following platforms are supported by this release:

    *  AIX 5.1 or later (rs6000)

    *  Linux: glibc 2.2 or later (x86)

       Linux: glibc 2.3 or later (x64)

    *  Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" or later (x86 or powerpc)

    *  Solaris 2.6 or later (sparc, 32 and 64 bit)

       Solaris 10 or later (x86)

    *  Windows 9x, Me, NT, 2000 (x86)

       Windows XP and 2003 (x86 and x64)

    For a chronological list of changes included in this and past releases,
    see the ActivePerl 5.8 Change Log.

  PPM version 4
    The rewritten PPM client is the main new feature for ActivePerl 818.
    The main user visible change will be that the command line shell is
    replaced by a graphical user interface.

    The "ppm" command continues to work as a command line utility. Run
    "perldoc ppm" or "ppm help" for details about what subcommands are
    available and how they behave.

    PPM manages packages installed in different *install areas*. These
    areas are used to separate the packages that come bundled with
    ActivePerl from the packages that are installed locally. This also
    allows users to install packages into their home directory when using
    a shared ActivePerl installation which the user does not have
    permissions to modify.

    There are two install areas that always are present for an ActivePerl
    installation: "perl" and "site". The perl interpreter itself, the core
    modules, and packages bundled by ActiveState are in the "perl" install
    area. The "site" install area is where the local administrator
    installs additional packages. This area starts out empty in a new
    installation of ActivePerl.

    Earlier releases of PPM effectively only managed the "site" install
    area. This area also contained the bundled packages as well as the PPM
    client itself which created problems in upgrading any of these
    packages (you had to be very careful not to break PPM itself). This
    also prevented ActiveState from providing updates to the core and
    bundled packages in our repository. The new separation solves this
    problem.

    Use the "ppm area list" command to display which install areas are
    currently available. Use the "ppm list" command to display what
    packages are currently installed. Use the "ppm list site" command to
    see what additional packages are installed in the "site" area. Use the
    "ppm install" command to install additional packages and "ppm help
    install" to learn more about how installation works.

Incompatibilities
    Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with Perl 5.6. 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.

    Please 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 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 bundled in addition to the core modules
    are now installed in $PREFIX/lib. For ActivePerl build 817 and earlier
    these where installed in $PREFIX/site/lib.

    The $Config{siteprefix} is now $PREFIX/site. For ActivePerl build 817
    and earlier it used to be just $PREFIX and then $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. For ActivePerl build 817 and earlier
    these where installed in $PREFIX/bin. Note that the $PREFIX/site/bin
    directory is not automatically added to the PATH environment variable
    by the Windows installer. Another consequence of the
    $Config{siteprefix} update is that modules configured and built with
    "perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=..." now get installed directly in the lib
    directory of the given "PREFIX".

  PPM version 4
    The new PPM client is a complete rewrite of PPM version 3 that was
    distributed with ActivePerl build 817 and earlier releases (see
    above). The following incompatibilities exist:

    *  Running "ppm" without arguments now bring up a graphical user
       interface; there is no more 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
       will not be 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", "ppm target", and "ppm
       tree" 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 in PPM.

Known Issues
  PPM
    There are some known outstanding issues with the new PPM client:

    *  Packages using post install scripts can't be installed from the
       GUI. The workaround is to use the command line version of ppm to
       install these packages.

    *  The "Upgradable View" show packages that would downgrade the
       installation if installed.

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

    *  Installing modules that PPM depends on with "make install UNINST=1"
       manually or from the CPAN shell will break PPM as this will remove
       modules from the "perl" install area. PPM always ignore modules in
       "site" or user defined areas in order to protect its integrity.
       Workaround is to install without specifying the "UNINST=1" option.

    *  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.

    *  Sync of repository state might be slow. (#45830)

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

    If you find other issues with the new PPM client, please report them
    at <http://bugs.ActiveState.com/ActivePerl/>.

  AIX
    The following issues are know to exists when installing ActivePerl on
    AIX:

    *  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.

  Linux and Solaris
    The following issues are know to exists when installing ActivePerl on
    Unix:

    *  Some versions of tar on Solaris have bugs that prevent proper
       extraction of files in a package that has long path names. Most
       other versions of tar on Solaris use a different method than GNU
       tar to encode pathnames longer than 100 characters. GNU tar is
       therefore required to extract the package into the file system
       correctly. A precompiled version of GNU tar for the sparc platform
       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".

    *  On version 10.3 or earlier, running "ppm" without arguments from a
       remote console (e.g. via ssh) causes a core dump as it attempts to
       launch the PPM GUI instead of providing an informative "ppm gui
       failed" error.

  Windows
    The following issues are know to exists when installing ActivePerl on
    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 problems you encounter with this release at the
    following location:

        http://bugs.ActiveState.com/ActivePerl/

    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.

