A couple of requests for FC-6

[Jan Pazdziora]

On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 01:46:23PM -0700, Ian Burrell wrote:
> >
> >   Removing support for perl 5.8.3 and perl 5.8.4 reduces the number
> >   of directories in the perl search path (@INC), which improves the
> >   perl modules loading time.
> >
> >   This has already been done in past for FC-4 where support for
> >   perl 5.8.0/5.8.1/5.8.2 has dropped.

[...]

> >   perl specfile patch:
> >   --------------------
> >   --- perl.spec.588_8     2006-07-14 22:22:06.000000000 +0100
> >   +++ perl.spec   2006-09-17 16:10:58.000000000 +0100
> >   @@ -26,9 +26,7 @@
> >    Provides: perl(:WITHOUT_THREADS)
> >    %endif
> >
> >   -%define perlmodcompat 5.8.7 5.8.6 5.8.5 5.8.4 5.8.3
> >   -Provides: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.3)
> >   -Provides: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.4)
> >   +%define perlmodcompat 5.8.7 5.8.6 5.8.5
> >    Provides: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.5)
> >    Provides: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.6)
> >    Provides: perl(:MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.7)
> >   --------------------
> >
> >   Note:
> >   The FC-4 change was reported in the Release Notes.
> 
> I thought the FC-4 change was done because 5.8.6 was not binary
> compatible with modules built for 5.8.2 and earlier.  Perl changed
> binary module compatibility at 5.8.3.  All versions since then have
> maintained binary module compatibility.  The FC-3 perl 5.8.5 had a bug
> in that it included the MODULE_COMPAT_5.8.2 and earlier and could have
> loaded incompatible modules.
> 
> How big is the performance boost?

Checking

	use DBI;

using

	strace perl -MDBI -e 1 2>&1 | egrep '5.8.[34]' | wc -l

shows 240 stat64's, all coming from searches in site_perl and
vendor_perl directories. For -MCGI it's 164.

However: what happens if the user was upgrading from older perls and
still has some (presumably nonstandard) modules in these paths? Will
the %post somehow move them to newer directories?

-- 
Jan Pazdziora
RHN Sustaining Engineering, Red Hat