On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 07:25:50PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > On Fri, Aug 20, 2021 at 10:27:59AM -0700, Joe Perches wrote: > > Perl 5.8 is nearly 20 years old now. > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_5_version_history > > > > checkpatch uses regexes that are incompatible with perl versions > > earlier than 5.10, but these uses are currently runtime checked > > and skipped if the perl version is too old. This runtime checking > > skips several useful tests. > > > > There is also some desire for tools like kernel-doc, checkpatch and > > get_maintainer to use a common library of regexes and functions: > > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/YR2lexDd9N0sWxIW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > > > It'd be useful to set the minimum perl version to something more modern. > > > > I believe perl 5.14, now only a decade old, is a reasonable target. > > > > Any objections or suggestions for a newer minimum version? > > Not an objection per se, but some data points. > > Oracle Linux 5 (released 2007, still under support) has perl 5.8.8 > Oracle Linux 6 (released 2011) has perl 5.10.1 > Oracle Linux 7 (released 2014) has perl 5.16.3 > Oracle Linux 8 (released 2019) has perl 5.26.3 > > I don't know that we need to be able to build on a distro from 2007 > or even from 2011. I think it's reasonable to require updating to a > 2014 distro in order to build a 2021 kernel. > > For comparison, we currently require gcc-4.9 to build the kernel, and > 4.9.0 was released in 2014. So perl-5.16 wouldn't be an unreasonable > requirement, I believe. Ubuntu name/version mapping: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ Ubuntu Perl versions: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/perl The oldest publicly supported Ubuntu (18.04 Bionic) uses Perl 5.26. -- Kees Cook
