Hello everyone,
I am forwarding this message from the perl-mvs mailing list. I raise this to
anyone that uses Perl under z/OS UNIX and would like to have access to the
newer features beyond what IBM has provided in the ported tools (5.8).
A later note in the discussion details what would probably be required,
which would be pretty minimal: "...what would be most needed is (as Ricardo
[original poster of the following] says) is regular testing (even just
monthly, or even just quarterly, would be better than the current nothing)
of the Perl 5 source code in z/OS: does it compile? And if it doesn't
work, report it back to perl5-porters, and work with them to try to get it
working again. Debugging by email is perfectly feasible. "
So if your organization uses Perl and would like to contribute (minimal
cost), please sign up to the perl-mvs mailing list and speak up. perl-mvs is
hosted on perl.org and can be subscribed to at
http://lists.perl.org/list/perl-mvs.html.
(If I had a zPDT, I'd be there in a heartbeat. :) )
Cheers,
Ray
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: EBCDIC support is on the chopping block
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2013 18:30:19 -0500
From: Ricardo Signes <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
As was brought up about 18 months ago...
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.mvs/2011/09/msg1545.html
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.mvs/2012/01/msg1598.html
...support for z/OS, specifically EBCDIC support, is on the chopping block. So
far, no dedicated resources, human or otherwise, have been provided.
This means that nobody knows exactly whether current perl source compiles and
works on z/OS. Basically, we all know it doesn't, but don't have much proof.
We also pretty much know that it isn't going to get fixed, because nobody has
stepped up to be its champion.
The working assumption of the core perl team has to be that anybody who wants
perl on an EBCDIC system right now is either using private patches, a
vendor-supplied perl using private patches, or an old perl version known to
work. In the case of privately-constructed patches, it would not be enough
merely to supply them to perl5-porters. The platform needs serious backing:
dedicated smoke servers, a reliable presence on the list of platform experts,
and an assurance that this will continue.
Without these things showing up soon, it is very likely that perl 5.18.0 is the
last perl that will even remotely attempt to support EBCDIC, and that
EBCDIC-related branches will be freely removed in future commits.
I will provide more concrete dates in the coming weeks, but do not delay
waiting for concrete dates. Treat this as a last call.
--
rjbs
--
M. Ray Mullins
Roseville, CA, USA
http://www.catherdersoftware.com/
German is essentially a form of assembly language consisting entirely of far
calls heavily accented with throaty guttural sounds. ---ilvi
French is essentially German with messed-up pronunciation and spelling.
--Robert B Wilson
English is essentially French converted to 7-bit ASCII. ---Christophe Pierret
[for Alain LaBonté]
--
M. Ray Mullins
Roseville, CA, USA
http://www.catherdersoftware.com/
German is essentially a form of assembly language consisting entirely of far
calls heavily accented with throaty guttural sounds. ---ilvi
French is essentially German with messed-up pronunciation and spelling.
--Robert B Wilson
English is essentially French converted to 7-bit ASCII. ---Christophe Pierret
[for Alain LaBonté]
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