F45 Change Proposal: perl5.44 [SystemWide]

Project Discussion Change Proposals
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1

perl5.44

Wiki

Announced

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary :open_book:

A new Perl 5.44 version brings a lot of changes done over a year of development. Perl 5.44 should be released on May 20 2026. See [perldelta - what is new for perl v5.43.10 - metacpan.org perldelta for 5.43.10 (devel release)] for more details about new release.

Owner :open_book:

Detailed Description :open_book:

New Perl is released every year and updates containing mainly bug fixes follow during the year. The 5.44.0 version is stable release this year.

Feedback :open_book:

N/A

Benefit to Fedora :open_book:

Up-to-date and latest perl release will be delivered to Fedora users.

Scope :open_book:

Every Perl package will be rebuilt in a dedicated f45-perl build-root against perl 5.44.0 and then if no major problem emerges the packages will be merged back to f45 build-root.

  • Proposal owners: New perl and all packages requiring libperl.so or versioned perl(MODULE_COMPAT) will be rebuilt into f45-perl build-root.
  • Other developers: Owners of packages that fail to rebuild, mainly perl-sig users, will be asked using Bugzilla to fix or remove their packages from the distribution.
  • Release engineering: [Making sure you're not a bot! #Releng issue number]
    Release engineers will be asked for new f45-perl build-root inheriting from f45 build-root. After successful finishing the rebuild, they will be asked to merge f45-perl packages back to f45 build-root.
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Alignment with Community Initiatives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact :open_book:

Vast majority of functionality will be preserved. Only the packages that failed to build against perl 5.44 will be removed from the distribution. That will require to remove those packages from the existing systems otherwise a package manager will encounter unsatisfied dependencies. The developers in Perl language are advised to install perl-doc and perl-debugger packages.

Early Testing (Optional) :open_book:

N/A

How To Test :open_book:

Try upgrading from Fedora 44 to 45. Try some Perl application to verify they work as expected. Try embedded perl in [Making sure you're not a bot! slapd] or [Making sure you're not a bot! snmpd].

User Experience :open_book:

There should not be any remarkable change in user experience. With the exception that previously locally installed modules with a CPAN clients will need a reinstallation.

Dependencies :open_book:

There is more than 3500 packages depending on perl. We will rebuild only all dual-lived packages and packages which require libperl.so or versioned perl(MODULE_COMPAT). It means only about 600 packages needs to rebuild. Most of them are expected not to break. Finishing this change can be endangered only by critical changes in a toolchain.
noarch packages don’t need to be rebuilt now.

Contingency Plan :open_book:

  • Contingency mechanism: If we find perl 5.44 is not suitable for Fedora 45, we will revert back to perl 5.42 and we drop the temporary build-root with already rebuilt packages.
  • Contingency deadline: branching Fedora 45 from Rawhide.
  • Blocks release? No.

Documentation :open_book:

Release Notes :open_book:

Perl 5.44.0 is a new stable release that focuses on improving performance, refining existing features, and adding new experimental capabilities.\n\nTBD

Last edited by @alking 2026-04-23T16:34:05Z

Last edited by @alking 2026-04-23T16:34:05Z

2

How do you feel about the proposal as written?

  • Strongly in favor
  • In favor, with reservations
  • Neutral
  • Opposed, but could be convinced
  • Strongly opposed
0 voters

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3

This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket #3607 for voting.

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