Re: Which Perl versions Autoconf needs

[Warren Young]

On Mar 29, 2023, at 20:29, Jacob Bachmeyer <jcb62281@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Digest::SHA was installable from CPAN long before it was a core module

More to the point, it’s _still_ installable that way, and the current version’s 
minimum Perl requirement is 5.3.0, from 1996:

    https://metacpan.org/pod/Digest::SHA

If you had to pin to an old version of the package to get it to install, I’d 
have less sympathy with this argument.

> the Perl version does *not* indicate its presence

It’s a good bet, though.

The thing is, it *isn't* the Autoconf Way: test for features, not versions.

There is one good use case for “use v5.xx” in a Perl program: when you’re 
requiring a particular version of the Perl interpreter, to use language 
features that didn’t exist and couldn’t be patched in with packages before that.

This is not that case.

However, I will repeat a point from an earlier thread: the generated configure 
scripts from the new version of Autoconf will continue running on these older 
systems.  The only thing being broken is the ability to *generate* configure 
scripts with Autoconf on those ancient systems.