On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 11:35:53PM +0100, Bruno Haible wrote: > > When you look into the files MiscXS.c, TestXS.c, XSParagraph.c (search for > PERL_VERSION in there) you can see that > > * The generated C code needs to be dependent on the Perl version, > * xsubpp has produced code that is compatible with older Perl versions. > > So, if you produce the tarball with Perl version X and users have a version > compatible to X or smaller than X, everything is fine. > > What is not covered is the forward compatibility: If you produce the tarball > with a Perl version that exists today, and in two years the newest Perl > requires different C code and thus the latest xsubpp generates > PERL_VERSION conditionals to cope for this case, you get bug reports > because the files that you have included in the tarball are incompatible. > > I would therefore follow Jacob's wisdom. > > Bruno >
I don't want to make this change at this stage and discover a load of problems with various platforms that we never had before. Also, if the *.c file was missing from the release and the user didn't have xsubpp, they would have no way to reproduce it, whereas if the *.c is incompatible and they do have xsubpp, they could always delete the *.c file and then regenerate it. Maybe we could reconsider it after the next release but I only want to make very minor changes at this point.
