Hi Max,
Sorry for this, I thought I already had. Basically, our stance is that before we can make Perl 6 a requirement, it not only has to be finished and a final version released, but widespread acceptance of Perl 6 has to occur. Perl 5 code will still work with Parrot (via Ponie), so before we can move from a Perl 5 code base to a Perl 6 code base, we need to know that we aren't cutting of clients who don't have access to Perl 6 on their servers.
To give you a frame of reference for adoptation times, our current code base works with Perl 5.004_04 or later - that target was set about 4 years ago, when 5.004_04 was still encountered on servers from time to time. Today 5.004_04 is pretty much gone, and although 5.005_02 and _03 are encountered from time to time, they are somewhat rare (this knowledge is based mainly on the fact that from time to time 5.6+ code sneaks in, and it usually takes quite some time before we get a bug report about it). We tend to feel that it would be appropriate to lift that requirement to 5.005_02, but we haven't made a final decision on whether or not to require 5.005 for v3 yet.
For reference on release dates (you can get the full list from perldoc perlhist): 5.004_04 was released 1997-Oct-15, 5.005_02 was released 1998-Aug-08, 5.005_03 was released 1999-Mar-28, 5.6.0 - 2000-Mar-22, 5.6.1 - 2001-Apr-08. So, even ignoring the 5.6.0 release date (5.6.0 was admittedly quite buggy), we're still looking at a 3-5+ year upgrade cycle. That said, the Perl 6 upgrade may happen more quickly than that, seeing as Perl 6 code is entirely different.
The best we can give you for now is a "wait and see." If rewriting some of our modules in Perl 6 can significantly improve their performance we may consider maintaining both a Perl 5 and Perl 6 version - but this certainly won't be the common case.
Gossamer Threads Development Team
Sorry for this, I thought I already had. Basically, our stance is that before we can make Perl 6 a requirement, it not only has to be finished and a final version released, but widespread acceptance of Perl 6 has to occur. Perl 5 code will still work with Parrot (via Ponie), so before we can move from a Perl 5 code base to a Perl 6 code base, we need to know that we aren't cutting of clients who don't have access to Perl 6 on their servers.
To give you a frame of reference for adoptation times, our current code base works with Perl 5.004_04 or later - that target was set about 4 years ago, when 5.004_04 was still encountered on servers from time to time. Today 5.004_04 is pretty much gone, and although 5.005_02 and _03 are encountered from time to time, they are somewhat rare (this knowledge is based mainly on the fact that from time to time 5.6+ code sneaks in, and it usually takes quite some time before we get a bug report about it). We tend to feel that it would be appropriate to lift that requirement to 5.005_02, but we haven't made a final decision on whether or not to require 5.005 for v3 yet.
For reference on release dates (you can get the full list from perldoc perlhist): 5.004_04 was released 1997-Oct-15, 5.005_02 was released 1998-Aug-08, 5.005_03 was released 1999-Mar-28, 5.6.0 - 2000-Mar-22, 5.6.1 - 2001-Apr-08. So, even ignoring the 5.6.0 release date (5.6.0 was admittedly quite buggy), we're still looking at a 3-5+ year upgrade cycle. That said, the Perl 6 upgrade may happen more quickly than that, seeing as Perl 6 code is entirely different.
The best we can give you for now is a "wait and see." If rewriting some of our modules in Perl 6 can significantly improve their performance we may consider maintaining both a Perl 5 and Perl 6 version - but this certainly won't be the common case.
Gossamer Threads Development Team
