Re: [MacPerl] All these new updates to MacPerl...

[Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>]

Lionel Artom-Ginzburg <lionel@bigtime.blank.org>
>Hi.  As someone with a fairly low-bandwidth (28.8) link to the 'Net,

Hey, if a 14.4 link is fast for me to upload them, an 28.8 should be
fast enough for you to download them :-)

> I'm 
>wondering if someone could let me know what's going on with the sudden 
>surge of updates (3 or 4 in the last three weeks!) to the MacPerl 
>distribution.

The basic reason is that because a MacPerl CD is being made, I'm pushing
as hard as I can to get a solid release out.

>  With no release notes posted to CPAN (and none posted here 
>in the few days I've subscribed),

You must have subscribed just after I released 5.1.8. See the release notes
below.

> it's very hard to figure out whether 
>the bugfixes being issued are necessary to the stuff I'm working on, and 
>I just don't have the time to download a 4 meg binary at 28.8 only to 
>have it (as with 5.1.7r4) obsoleted two days later by a new release!  

5.1.7 was never announced to the public because some bugs cropped up in the
"final candidate" stage that were serious enough for another fix.

>What changes have been made since 5.1.5r4 (the one I have installed, and 
>the last one that had a small updater posted for users of the previous 
>revision)?

No, that's not true. The updater contains changes *to* the 5.1.5 release.
Furthermore, precisely because of the overly frequent updates, 5.1.8 contains 
an updater from 5.1.[67].

The precise release notes are attached below. In summary, 5.1.6 fixed lots of
bugs in 5.1.5 but contained serious bugs in the 68K versions because of a bug
in the C compiler. 5.1.7 fixed these bugs, but still contained some cosmetic
problems (the spinning cursor didn;t work and the BNDL resource did not 
contain all icons). 5.1.8 fixed those cosmetic bugs, and, although at least
two problems with it are known by now, they will be easily fixed in a small
separate updater (the reason such updaters are rarely released is that most of
the necessary bug fixes changed the MacPerl core, so I needed to release new
binaries).

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher   <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>   http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri
   "There once was an Age of Reason, but we've progressed beyond it."
                                   -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_

If you already have 5.1.6 or 5.1.7, you will NOT have to download
Mac_Perl_518r4_appl:

 - If you are using PowerPC MacPerl only, the three releases are identical
   except for the $[ fix (which is probably no big issue).
 - If you are using the Small 68K application, you can download the smaller
   Mac_Perl_518r4_appl_only package and install it over your existing
   installation.
 - If you were using the Big 68K or CFM68K applications, you can download
   those packages and install them over your existing installation.

DISTRIBUTIONS

MacPerl is arranged into a number of distributions, named according to
the following scheme:

Mac_Perl_518r4_appl.bin
^        ^   ^ ^    ^
MacPerl  |   | |    MacBinary Suffix
         |   | Distribution Component
         |   Perl Patchlevel
         MacPerl Release

Currently the following components are available:

  appl           The MacPerl application (Dynamic PowerPC/Small 68K), all
                 libraries and documentation.
  tool           The Perl MPW Tool (Dynamic PowerPC/Small 68K) and scripts.
  bigappl        The MacPerl application (Dynamic PowerPC/Big 68K).
  bigtool        The Perl MPW Tool (Dynamic PowerPC/Big 68K).
  appl_cfm68K    The MacPerl application (Dynamic PowerPC/Dynamic 68K).
  src            The MacPerl source code.
  appl_only      Only the MacPerl application (Dynamic PowerPC/Small 68K)
                 without libraries and documentation.

"Small" means that the application doesn't have the Mac Toolbox modules or
the GD module compiled in (but it still will be a fully functional Perl
otherwise).
"Big" means that the application has those modules compiled in.
"Dynamic" means that the application doesn't have those modules compiled in,
but is able to load them (and arbitrary other modules) as dynamic libraries
and thus behaves as if they were compiled in.

You should install distributions as suggested in the figure below, from bottom
to top (i.e., to get the big MPW tool, install appl, then tool, then bigtool).

                        +---------+-----+
                        | bigtool | src |
+---------+-------------+---------+-----+
| bigappl | appl_cfm68K |      tool     |
+---------+-------------+---------------+
|              appl                     |
+---------------------------------------+

RELEASE NOTES

5.1.8r4  07Jan98
 - 68K versions would fail to spin the cursor [Brian Matthews].

5.1.7r4 05Jan98
 - Due to a compiler bug, length() would return 0 in all 68K versions
   [Paul Schinder].
 - Changes to $[ would persist across script executions [Xah Lee].
 - Some newer toolbox modules were omitted from BigMacPerl [Brian Matthews].

5.1.6r4	31Dec97
 - Added Chris Nandor's Appletalk code to IO::Socket.
 - Various improvements in the toolbox modules, notably:
   - Added support for accessing the fields of a ControlHandle.
	- Added routine Dialogs::GetDialogItemControl [].
	- Added methods item_control, item_hilite and item_value to 
	  MacDialog.
	- Added more alias routines to Mac::Files [Chris Nandor].
	- Added filename mappings to Mac::InternetConfig [Chris Nandor].
	- Fixed MacPerl.pm module [Xah Lee].
	- Corrected packing of Appletalk addresses [Paul Schinder].
 - Lookups of symbols starting with the first character of a window used
   to misbehave [Xah Lee, I believe].
 - Environment variables would get scrambled under certain circumstances
   [Adam Schneider].
 - The first Perl script to run in the application after startup used to
   have overly buffered standard streams [Brian Matthews].
 - MacPerl now displays the code architecture (68K, PowerPC, CFM68K) and 
   the patchlevel in the About... dialog [Tim Rand].
 - Replaces sort implementation with more efficient version where Chris 
   will find it harder to find a pathological case [Chris Nandor].
 - Fixed permission bug in sysopen() [Chris Nandor].
 - $0 could only be set to strings of a limited length [Brian Matthews].
 - Filename globbing can now deal with whitespace, provided it is
   quoted [Tom Harrington].
 - Changes to $^O erroneously persisted across script executions 
   [Chris Nandor].
 - The modification times in the folders of new files were set to absurd 
   values [Sean Burke].
 - Added variable $MacPerl::Architecture containing the code architecture.
 - Fixed behaviour of double-clicks in MacPerl::Pick in list context 
   [Brian Matthews].

5.1.5r4		10Nov97
 - Fixed various bugs in the toolbox libraries, added examples that were
   left out of the distribution [Dan Herron, Chris Nandor].
 - Made CFM68K variant functional again, turned it into fat binary.
 - Added Internet Config to the distribution again.
 - Running a program twice under the debugger would crash [Will Merrill].
 - Incorporated Paul Schinder's ports of libnet and LWP.
 - Added editor for global environment variables [Paul Schinder].
 - Universal support was broken [Paul Schinder].
 - Defaults in StandardFile.pl were broken [Manfred Lauer].
 - (Hopefully) repaired all .pl files whose XCMDs had been omitted
   [Paul Schinder].



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