ActivePerl 5.6 Change Log

For the latest information on ActivePerl, please see:

    http://www.ActiveState.com/ActivePerl/

Build 638 Thursday, Apr 15, 2004

PPM2 and PPM3

PPM3 has not been updated to the latest version PPM 3.1 as shipped with the ActivePerl 5.8 series. PPM 3.1 assumes that PPM 2.x is no longer installed and doesn't synchronize package information with it. Since PPM2 is the default PPM version in ActivePerl 5.6, PPM3 has been kept at version 3.0.

Bug Fixes and Changes

On Windows, a potential buffer overrun in the stat() function has been fixed.
On Windows, a handle leak in kill() has been fixed.
On Windows, a memory leak in fork() has been fixed.
On Windows NT and later, subprocesses are now started via ``cmd /x/d/c'' instead of ``cmd /x/c''. This disables execution of AutoRun command specified in the registry.
On Windows, the four-argument form of select() did not report the $! (errno) value properly after errors. This has been corrected.
Win32::GetOSVersion() returns additional information about the system (when available, Windows NT SP6 and later).
Perl for ISAPI would sometimes close a filehandle twice. This leads to a race condition where another thread could have reused the filehandle before the second close would be executed. This usually happens in high load scenarios. Typical symptoms include error messages that Perl could not load standard modules, even though they are installed on the server.

Perl for ISAPI no longer closes filehandles implicitly and relies now on the application to properly clean up file and socket handle resources.

Perl for ISAPI now avoids closing the special handles STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR, even if the script asked for that explicitly.
The following bundled modules have been updated to their latest versions:

  Archive-Tar
  Compress-Zlib
  Digest
  Digest-MD2
  Digest-MD5
  Digest-SHA1
  File-CounterFile
  HTML-Parser
  HTML-Tree
  libnet
  libwin32
  libwww-perl
  MD5
  MIME-Base64
  Storable
  Test-Harness
  URI

The following modules have been added to ActivePerl:

  Data-Dump
  IO-Zlib
  Test-Simple

Other minor bug fixes and documentation updates.

Build 635 Thursday, Feb 6, 2003

Fixes for Security Issues

On Linux, the crypt() builtin did not return consistent results. This has been corrected.
The reval() and rdo() methods in the Safe module could be subverted into executing unsafe code by the callee. This problem has been corrected.

Other Bug Fixes and Changes

Overloading bool could result in core dumps in some situations. This has been corrected.
On Windows, sockets opened by code running under PerlScript and Perl for ISAPI were not fully closed internally. The ensuing leak resulted in failure to open files or sockets after a certain number of sockets had been opened and closed under these environments. This problem was particularly severe when running under ActivePerl 5.6.1.632 or 5.6.1.633, and is now fixed.
On Windows, PerlScript and Perl for ISAPI were affected by a reentrancy problem, which meant that recursive invocation of these two engines could fail. This problem has been corrected.
PPM3 includes a number of bug fixes for better handling of both PPM2 and PPM3 repositories.
Tk and libwww-perl have been updated to their latest versions.
Win32::EventLog could fail to retrieve messages under some circumstances. This has been corrected.
Win32::OLE has been updated. Run ``perldoc Win32::OLE::NEWS'' for a summary.
Win32::Shortcut no longer calls CoUninitialize() within an END block. This avoids random coredumps from this module when its DESTROY methods happen to get called after the END block executes.
Win32::Job now propagates environment changes to its subprocesses correctly.
A Win32::GetFolderPath() builtin is now supported. Run ``perldoc Win32'' for documentation on this new builtin.
PPM v2 and v3 can now optionally generate HTML documentation when installing packages if POD documentation is found in the package. This is controlled by the rebuildhtml option in PPM v2 and the rebuild-html option in PPM v3.
Other minor bug fixes and documentation updates.
Build 634 was not formally released to the public.

Build 633 Monday, June 17, 2002

Bug Fixes and Changes

The PPM3 release included in Build 632 had a bug in the package upgrade functionality. This has been corrected in PPM v3.0.1.
Some modules that autoloaded their constants could reset $! during autoloading. Such locations now properly localize $! before potentially modifying it.
IO::Pipe now works on Windows.
libwin32 v0.191 is included on Windows.

Build 632 Monday, June 3, 2002

Fixes for Security Issues

Compress-Zlib is now linked with zlib v1.1.4, which fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability in this library.
The version of SOAP-Lite included in ActivePerl 5.6.1.631 and earlier allowed untrusted data to call any subroutine that is defined in the program that loads SOAP::Lite, or in any modules used by the program. SOAP-Lite v0.55, included in this release of ActivePerl, contains a fix for this issue.

Other Bug Fixes and Changes

Redirecting STD* handles with open(STDOUT, "&=FOO``)> leaked memory on all platforms. This leak has been fixed.
Race conditions involving backticks, piped open() have been fixed. These problems could affect environments where multiple Perl interpreters execute in concurrent threads.
Use of the range operator on constant numbers, as for example 1..20, could result in compile-time stricture checks being disabled for parts of the program. The problem has been corrected.
XSUBs can now be undefined using undef().
On Unix platforms, %ENV and %SIG handling could result in race conditions. Changes to %ENV and %SIG are now only propagated to the underlying system process context within the top level interpreter.
On Unix platforms, ActivePerl now uses reentrant versions of library functions, where available. This further improves thread-safety in multiple-interpreter environments.
Win32::GetLongPathName() did not work correctly if there were ``.'' or ``..'' components in the argument. The implementation has been improved to handle this better.
On Windows platforms, a Win32::SetChildShowWindow() builtin is now supported. This can be used to set the visibility of child process windows. See Win32 for more information.
Newer versions of the following modules are included: Digest-MD5, MIME-Base64, URI, HTML-Parser, libwww-perl, SOAP-Lite, and libnet.
libwin32 has been updated on Windows platforms. There is support for job objects (available in Windows 2000 and XP) through the new Win32::Job extension, which can be used to manage a group of processes.
On Windows platforms, the installer ensures that the Microsoft Installer automatic repair ``feature'' will not be triggered. This ensures that the repair ``feature'' does not corrupt the ActivePerl installation by ``repairing'' critical files to their unrelocated state.
Documentation for perl programs is now included in the table of contents.

Build 631 Monday, December 31, 2001

Bug Fixes and Changes

ActivePerl 5.6.1.628 introduced a memory leak in eval "..." expressions that create anonymous subroutines. This has been fixed.
On Windows, the behavior of system(@list) has been further rationalized to improve compatibility with the behavior before 5.6.1.630. Automatic quoting of arguments with whitespace is now skipped if the argument already contains double quotes anywhere within it. Previously, the double quotes needed to be at both ends in order for further quoting to be skipped.
Bugs in command.com on Windows 9x/Me prevented the system() enhancements in ActivePerl 5.6.1.630 from working in some situations. These enhancements are now disabled under Windows 9x/Me.
Perl for ISAPI and PerlScript had a bug in ActivePerl 5.6.1.630 that caused system() and backticks to leak handles, resulting in failure of these functions after a certain number of invocations. This has been corrected.
ActivePerl 5.6.1.629 and later had a problem in Perl for ISAPI that caused %ENV modifications done by the script to affect the real environment, resulting in incompatible behavior of scripts that assumed the older behavior. The behavior before 5.6.1.629 has been reinstated.
On Windows, the internal memory allocator used by Perl could fail after around 1 GB of allocations even though more memory may be available on the system. Allocating up to and beyond 2GB is now possible if the system has memory available and allows a single process to allocate that amount of memory. Note that most Windows systems running on x86 have a 2GB limit on allocations by a single process.
Non-blocking waitpid() on any process (a.k.a. waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) is now supported on Windows.
Due to popular demand, the following modules are now included by default: Storable, Tk, and XML-Simple.
PPM v3 beta 3 is included. A number of bugs in beta 2 have been fixed. Installing from URLs (http, ftp, and file) and installing through a HTTP proxy server are now supported.
Compress-Zlib and MIME-Base64 have been updated to their latest versions.
Due to popular demand, HTML documentation has been reintroduced into the default installation for Windows.
Various other minor bugs have been fixed. See the ActivePerl bug database at http://bugs.ActiveState.com/ for more information.

Build 630 Wednesday, October 30, 2001

Bug Fixes and Changes

PPM v3 beta 2 is included. This version of PPM is a complete rewrite, and comes with many new features and improvements, including support for managing installation profiles through the ASPN web site.
Many of the standard extensions supplied with Perl have been audited for the use of C ``static'' variables and fixed to avoid such uses, making these extensions safe to use in multi-threaded environments such as PerlEx and PerlMx Enterprise. The list includes B, DynaLoader, File::Glob, DB_File, Opcode, and re.
The readline() (aka ``diamond'') operator now works on ``our'' variables.
On Windows, system() and backticks behave more sanely with respect to whitespace in arguments. Any whitespace inside quoted arguments are correctly preserved. system() with multiple arguments also automatically quotes any arguments that contain whitespace by enclosing them in double-quotes, as necessary. This improves portability of the standard idiom of calling system() with multiple arguments.
On Windows, IO::File::new_tmpfile() does not fail after 32767 calls
On Windows, entries in %ENV were sometimes being improperly propagated to child processes if such entries happened to be at the end of the internal process environment table. This misbehavior has been corrected.
PerlScript and Perl for ISAPI ignore the \\?\ prefix in new-fangled file names returned by IIS in Windows XP.
In scripts running under PerlScript or Perl for ISAPI, print() with more than one argument did not print the second and subsequent arguments. This has been fixed.
The style and content of the included online documentation has been extensively revised. On Windows, all the documentation is now provided in fully searchable HTML Help format. Documentation in conventional HTML format continues to be included only for Unix platforms, and can also be downloaded separately.
Some of the bundled modules have been updated to their latest available versions: libwin32 v0.18, URI v1.17, and SOAP-Lite v0.51 are now included.

Build 629 Thursday, August 23, 2001

Bug Fixes and Changes

Perl now uses the reentrant versions of time functions localtime_r(), gmtime_r(), and asctime_r() on Unix platforms, making the corresponding builtins and POSIX::asctime() thread-safe.
On Windows, child processes launched with Win32::Spawn() now correctly inherit any modifications to %ENV done by the script.
On Windows, modifications to $ENV{PATH} in the script correctly affect the lookup of executables in system() and backticks. Previous versions did not propagate %ENV modifications completely enough for the underlying CreateProcess() system call to notice any changes.
A small number of minor bug fixes from the Perl development track have been incorporated. See the ActivePerl source code diff for the complete list.
Compress-Zlib has been updated to v1.13.
libwin32 v0.173 is included.

Build 628 Thursday, July 5, 2001

Bug Fixes and Changes

A few bug fixes from the Perl development track have been incorporated. See the ActivePerl source code diff for the complete list.
ActivePerl on Solaris does not use Perl's malloc by default. Sufficient compatibility stubs are included such that binary compatibility with previous builds will not be affected.
HTML-Parser has been updated to v3.25.
The included HTML documentation has many substantive and cosmetic improvements.
Build 627 was not formally released to the public.

Build 626 Thursday, May 1, 2001

Build 626 is based on Perl 5.6.1. This is the first release of ActivePerl based on this new maintenance release of Perl. This release is meant for use in production systems. However, owing to the sheer volume of changes between Perl 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 that have been incorporated, please be sure to test it thoroughly in a non-critical environment before you upgrade your production systems.

Please check perl561delta for a list of the major changes in Perl. Only additional changes specific to ActivePerl are mentioned here.

Bug Fixes and Changes

Perl 5.6.1 has been incorporated. See perl561delta for a list of changes.
The Solaris pkgadd and Red Hat RPM packages are now relocatable. See the release notes for how to install them to a location other than the default one.
The following new modules have been included: HTML-Tagset v3.03
The following modules have been updated to newer versions: SOAP-Lite, HTML-Parser v3.19, HTML-Tree v3.11, URI v1.11, libwww-perl v5.51.

For additional information on module updates in Perl 5.6.1, see perl561delta.

A number of fixes to PPM have been included. PPM now displays a download status indicator, and sports a ``getconfig'' command.
A large number of documentation updates are included.

Build 623 Sunday, December 12, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me Installation

Installer now adds Perl/bin directory to the PATH environment variable for Windows 9x. Windows 9x will need to be rebooted for this to take effect.

The PATH settings are not removed after an uninstallation.

PPM updated to 2.1.2. It now uses SOAP-Lite and has drastically reduced bandwidth requirements for SUMMARY requests. This is a prerequisite for supporting the new PPM repository containing most of CPAN.
OLE Browser has been fixed to work on IE 5.5.
minor bug fixes to fork() emulation and duplication of socket handles on Windows 9X.

Build 622 Sunday, November 5, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

Custom build for ActivePerl CDROM
MSI installer addes the CDROM repository to the ppm.xml file (Windows only)

Build 620 Sunday, October 29, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

bug fixes in environment setup for backticks and system()

PerlScript

works now with IIS5. Previously ASP would sometimes return an empty page when the page was accessed simultaneously from multiple clients.
supports OLE objects as parameters (VT_DISPATCH)
various namespace / package setup problems fixed
STDIN/STDOUT/STDERR are now available when run under WSH
JScript and VBScript functions can be called directly (on ASP pages)

Documentation

Commandline parameters for MSI installer documented (installation notes)
Win32 builtin documentation moved from Pod to Modules

Modules

CGI.pm updated to 2.74
Win32API::Net updated to version 0.09

Build 618 Tuesday, September 12, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

Bug fixes imported from the Perl development track. See the following file for the detailed log:

    http://www.ActiveState.com/download/ActivePerl/src/5.6/AP618_diff.txt

Individual patches for each of these changes may also be obtained. See perlhack.

Perl's newSVrv() API function could result in corrupt data when coercing an already initialized value to the right type, and could also lead to memory leaks. Win32::OLE v0.14 tickled these bugs. newSVrv() has been fixed to resolve these issues.
Perl's optimizer could coredump on stacked assignments involving split(), such as @a = @b = split(...). This is now fixed.
Windows sockets weren't being initialized correctly in child threads if the parent already initialized it. This resulted in print() on a socket created under such conditions not being handled correctly (whereas send() would do the right thing). The problem has been fixed.
Win32::OLE v0.14 had a bug that could cause strings longer than 256 characters to be truncated by a single character. This has been corrected.

Build 617 Thursday, August 31, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

Bug fixes imported from the Perl development track. See the following file for the detailed log:

    http://www.ActiveState.com/download/ActivePerl/src/5.6/AP617_diff.txt

Individual patches for each of these changes may also be obtained. See perlhack.

Problems with backticks not returning a proper return code under Windows 9x have been fixed. Linux, Solaris and Windows NT/2000 weren't affected.
wait() and waitpid() now return the correct pid values for pseudo-pids on Windows.
New entries added to the end of the environment via %ENV did not get inherited by child processes on Windows. This has been corrected.
Build 616 introduced a change that could make close(SOCKET) return a bogus return value. This has been corrected.
Various minor PerlScript incompatibilities under Internet Explorer 5.5 on Windows have been corrected.
Perl for ISAPI and PerlScript do not add entries to the EventLog by default.
libnet v1.06 is now included with ActivePerl. To configure the site-specific defaults for libnet, run $Config{installprefix}/bin/libnetcfg.pl.
Digest-MD5 v2.11 is now included with ActivePerl.
Several bundled extensions have been upgraded to newer versions. URI v1.09, libwww-perl v5.48, Compress-Zlib v1.08 and libwin32 v0.17 are now included.
The included HTML documentation has been improved and updated to be current with the latest modules.
The HtmlHelp.pm module is no longer included with ActivePerl. If you want this module, please obtain it from a release prior to ActivePerl 617.

Build 616 Friday, July 14, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

Bug fixes imported from the Perl development track. See the following file for the detailed log:

    http://www.ActiveState.com/download/ActivePerl/src/5.6/AP616_diff.txt

Individual patches for each of these changes may also be obtained. See perlhack.

A bug in Win32::OLE that prevented PerlScript from working properly has been fixed.
On Windows, a small memory leak in the accept() builtin function has been fixed.
On Windows, creating sockets in pseudo-child processes did not work because Winsock was not initialized in the pseudo-process. This has been rectified.

Build 615 Thursday, June 29, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

Bug fixes imported from the Perl development track. See the following file for the detailed log:

    http://www.ActiveState.com/download/ActivePerl/src/5.6/AP615_diff.txt

Individual patches for each of these changes may also be obtained. See perlhack.

On Unix platforms, ActivePerl is now built with the -Duseithreads Configure option, just as on Windows. While this provides a functionally identical perl, it also makes this build binary incompatible with earlier builds on Unix platforms. If you had installed any extensions (i.e. modules with XS code) using earlier builds via PPM or otherwise, you will need to reinstall them under this build. Future builds will maintain binary compatibility with this one.

On Windows, this build continues to be binary compatible with build 613.

The installation location for the native installations on Unix (Red Hat RPM, Debian dpkg, or Solaris pkgadd) have changed. These packages will now be installed under /usr/local/ActivePerl-5.6/ rather than under /usr/local/perl-5.6. This one-time change avoids confusion with locally installed versions built from the sources, and also avoids installing on top of existing binary-incompatible build 613 installations.

The installation location can be chosen as usual on Windows, and when installing using the generic installers on Unix.

On Windows, chdir() could sometimes fail to return failure when given a non-existent directory, and UNC paths didn't work correctly. These problems have been corrected.
The libwin32 v0.16 release from CPAN is included for the Windows builds.
Various small PPM bugs have been fixed.
A bug in PerlScript that prevented it from working under IIS5 on Windows 2000 has been fixed.

Build 613 Thursday, March 23, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

This build corresponds to the Perl 5.6.0 source code release.
This package contains some files that were missing in build 612.

Build 612 Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

This build corresponds to the Perl 5.6.0 source code release.
This build incorporates mostly minor bug fixes between 5.6.0 release candidate 2 and the final 5.6.0 source code release. See perl56delta for a detailed summary of changes between 5.005 and 5.6.0.

Build 611 Wednesday, March 15, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

This build corresponds to the Perl 5.6.0 release candidate 2 sources.
binmode() now supports a second optional argument that can be used to switch a file handle to ``:crlf'' or ``:raw'' mode. (These correspond to the traditional text and binary modes.) See perlfunc/binmode.
The new open pragma can be used to set the default mode for implicitly opened handles in the current lexical scope. This is useful to set a particular mode for the results of the qx// operator. See open.
The bundled ActivePerl documentation has been reorganized. Outdated material has either been reworked to reflect the current status, or removed when it was no longer applicable.
Many bugs in the beta releases have been fixed.

Build 609 Wednesday, March 1, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

This build corresponds to the public Perl 5.6 beta 3 release, otherwise known as v5.5.670.
The Windows version of the installer now supports installing into paths that contain spaces.
Linux and Solaris install packages that allow non-privileged users to install anywhere are supported. The system-specific packaging formats that typically require root privileges continue to be available.
Support for kill(0,$pid) on Windows to test if process exists.
There is a new tutorial on Object Oriented Perl for beginners. See `perlboot'.
The PPM repository has been updated with newer versions of modules for all supported platforms.

Build 607 Friday, February 11, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

This build corresponds to the public Perl 5.6 beta 1 release, otherwise known as v5.5.650.
Several bugs in the Unicode support have been fixed.
Support for Unicode has changed from previous development versions. See perlunicode for details.
There is a new -C command-line switch to request that system calls use the wide-character APIs. This can also be used in the shebang line.
The byte pragma can be used to force byte-semantics on Perl operations. When not used, character semantics apply if the data is Unicode; otherwise, byte semantics are used.

Build 606 Friday, February 4, 2000

Bug Fixes and Changes

PPM can communicate with the package repository via SOAP. Currently PPM's and SOAP's integration is somewhat limited; however, it serves as proof of concept.
New modules included with the distribution are:

         - SOAP
         - File::CounterFile
         - Font::AFM

Support for Unicode has changed from previous versions. See perlunicode for details.

Build 604 Friday, November 26, 1999

Bug Fixes and Changes

A few bugs in the fork() emulation have been fixed. perlfork reflects these changes.

Build 603 Tuesday, November 23, 1999

Bug Fixes and Changes

NOTE:Build 603 is not binary compatible with earlier builds. If you have compiled your own extensions with earlier builds, you will need to recompile all of them.
Build 603 corresponds to Perl 5.005_62. Additional patches available since 5.005_62 in the public Perl repository have been incorporated.
Preliminary support for fork() is included. See perlfork for details about this functionality.
Documentation in fully searchable HTMLHelp format is included.
Many of the included extensions from CPAN have been updated to newer versions.
A large number of minor bugs in the Perl core have been fixed. See the Changes file in the included sources for a detailed list.

Build 602 Thursday, August 5, 1999

Bug Fixes and Changes

Build 602 corresponds to Perl 5.005_60. Additional patches available since 5.005_60 in the public Perl repository have been incorporated.
A number of pre-built extensions from CPAN are included in this release. These may be installed using PPM or VPM (both of which are included).

Build 601 Tuesday, July 13, 1999

Bug Fixes and Changes

Build 601 corresponds to Perl 5.005_57. Additional patches available since 5.005_57 in the public Perl repository have been incorporated.
This build features a major reworking of the API exposed by the PERL_OBJECT build option. The result is a well-defined Perl API (restricted to C syntax) that provides very high degree of compatibility for extensions available from CPAN.
Perl for ISAPI, PerlScript, PerlEz and PerlMsg have been modified to use the new PERL_OBJECT API.
Visual Package Manager (VPM) is now available. VPM can be used to install pre-built binaries from a package repository. One such is available at http://www.activestate.com/packages/perl5_6/.

What's new in the 600 Series

Major Changes

This series is built around development versions of Perl 5.006. Build 600 corresponds to Perl 5.005_57.
Significant changes that have occurred in the 5.006 development track are documented in perldelta.
Build 600 includes additional changes for supporting globalization. All Win32 API calls made by Perl now follow the utf8 mode of the interpreter. Wide versions of the API calls are made when utf8 is in effect. See utf8 for more information on enabling support for Unicode.
The 600 series is not binary compatible with builds in the 500 series. Any extensions built using binaries from the ActivePerl 500 series will need to be recompiled. Note especially that this applies to PPDs that may have been built for 500 series builds.