{ "content": [ { "type": "text", "text": "# perlpolicy (man)\n\n## NAME\n\nperlpolicy - Various and sundry policies and commitments related to the Perl core\n\n## DESCRIPTION\n\nThis document is the master document which records all written policies about how the Perl 5\nPorters collectively develop and maintain the Perl core.\n\n## Sections\n\n- **NAME**\n- **DESCRIPTION**\n- **GOVERNANCE** (1 subsections)\n- **MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT**\n- **BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY AND DEPRECATION** (1 subsections)\n- **MAINTENANCE BRANCHES** (1 subsections)\n- **CONTRIBUTED MODULES** (1 subsections)\n- **DOCUMENTATION**\n- **STANDARDS OF CONDUCT**\n- **CREDITS**\n\nUse structuredContent.sections for detailed options, examples, and full documentation.\n" } ], "structuredContent": { "command": "perlpolicy", "section": "", "mode": "man", "summary": "perlpolicy - Various and sundry policies and commitments related to the Perl core", "synopsis": null, "tldr_summary": null, "tldr_examples": [], "tldr_source": null, "flags": [], "examples": [], "see_also": [], "section_outline": [ { "name": "NAME", "lines": 2, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "DESCRIPTION", "lines": 3, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "GOVERNANCE", "lines": 1, "subsections": [ { "name": "Perl 5 Porters", "lines": 40 } ] }, { "name": "MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT", "lines": 38, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY AND DEPRECATION", "lines": 50, "subsections": [ { "name": "Terminology", "lines": 43 } ] }, { "name": "MAINTENANCE BRANCHES", "lines": 63, "subsections": [ { "name": "Getting changes into a maint branch", "lines": 27 } ] }, { "name": "CONTRIBUTED MODULES", "lines": 1, "subsections": [ { "name": "A Social Contract about Artistic Control", "lines": 84 } ] }, { "name": "DOCUMENTATION", "lines": 27, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "STANDARDS OF CONDUCT", "lines": 41, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "CREDITS", "lines": 6, "subsections": [] } ], "sections": { "NAME": { "content": "perlpolicy - Various and sundry policies and commitments related to the Perl core\n", "subsections": [] }, "DESCRIPTION": { "content": "This document is the master document which records all written policies about how the Perl 5\nPorters collectively develop and maintain the Perl core.\n", "subsections": [] }, "GOVERNANCE": { "content": "", "subsections": [ { "name": "Perl 5 Porters", "content": "Subscribers to perl5-porters (the porters themselves) come in several flavours. Some are\nquiet curious lurkers, who rarely pitch in and instead watch the ongoing development to\nensure they're forewarned of new changes or features in Perl. Some are representatives of\nvendors, who are there to make sure that Perl continues to compile and work on their\nplatforms. Some patch any reported bug that they know how to fix, some are actively patching\ntheir pet area (threads, Win32, the regexp -engine), while others seem to do nothing but\ncomplain. In other words, it's your usual mix of technical people.\n\nAmong these people are the core Perl team. These are trusted volunteers involved in the\nongoing development of the Perl language and interpreter. They are not required to be\nlanguage developers or committers.\n\nOver this group of porters presides Larry Wall. He has the final word in what does and does\nnot change in any of the Perl programming languages. These days, Larry spends most of his\ntime on Raku, while Perl 5 is shepherded by a steering council of porters responsible for\ndeciding what goes into each release and ensuring that releases happen on a regular basis.\n\nLarry sees Perl development along the lines of the US government: there's the Legislature\n(the porters, represented by the core team), the Executive branch (the steering council), and\nthe Supreme Court (Larry). The legislature can discuss and submit patches to the executive\nbranch all they like, but the executive branch is free to veto them. Rarely, the Supreme\nCourt will side with the executive branch over the legislature, or the legislature over the\nexecutive branch. Mostly, however, the legislature and the executive branch are supposed to\nget along and work out their differences without impeachment or court cases.\n\nYou might sometimes see reference to Rule 1 and Rule 2. Larry's power as Supreme Court is\nexpressed in The Rules:\n\n1. Larry is always by definition right about how Perl should behave. This means he has\nfinal veto power on the core functionality.\n\n2. Larry is allowed to change his mind about any matter at a later date, regardless of\nwhether he previously invoked Rule 1.\n\nGot that? Larry is always right, even when he was wrong. It's rare to see either Rule\nexercised, but they are often alluded to.\n\nFor the specifics on how the members of the core team and steering council are elected or\nrotated, consult perlgov, which spells it all out in detail.\n" } ] }, "MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT": { "content": "Perl 5 is developed by a community, not a corporate entity. Every change contributed to the\nPerl core is the result of a donation. Typically, these donations are contributions of code\nor time by individual members of our community. On occasion, these donations come in the form\nof corporate or organizational sponsorship of a particular individual or project.\n\nAs a volunteer organization, the commitments we make are heavily dependent on the goodwill\nand hard work of individuals who have no obligation to contribute to Perl.\n\nThat being said, we value Perl's stability and security and have long had an unwritten\ncovenant with the broader Perl community to support and maintain releases of Perl.\n\nThis document codifies the support and maintenance commitments that the Perl community should\nexpect from Perl's developers:\n\n• We \"officially\" support the two most recent stable release series. 5.26.x and earlier\nare now out of support. As of the release of 5.32.0, we will \"officially\" end support\nfor Perl 5.28.x, other than providing security updates as described below.\n\n• To the best of our ability, we will attempt to fix critical issues in the two most recent\nstable 5.x release series. Fixes for the current release series take precedence over\nfixes for the previous release series.\n\n• To the best of our ability, we will provide \"critical\" security patches / releases for\nany major version of Perl whose 5.x.0 release was within the past three years. We can\nonly commit to providing these for the most recent .y release in any 5.x.y series.\n\n• We will not provide security updates or bug fixes for development releases of Perl.\n\n• We encourage vendors to ship the most recent supported release of Perl at the time of\ntheir code freeze.\n\n• As a vendor, you may have a requirement to backport security fixes beyond our 3 year\nsupport commitment. We can provide limited support and advice to you as you do so and,\nwhere possible will try to apply those patches to the relevant -maint branches in git,\nthough we may or may not choose to make numbered releases or \"official\" patches\navailable. See \"SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION\" in perlsec for details on how\nto begin that process.\n", "subsections": [] }, "BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY AND DEPRECATION": { "content": "Our community has a long-held belief that backward-compatibility is a virtue, even when the\nfunctionality in question is a design flaw.\n\nWe would all love to unmake some mistakes we've made over the past decades. Living with\nevery design error we've ever made can lead to painful stagnation. Unwinding our mistakes is\nvery, very difficult. Doing so without actively harming our users is nearly impossible.\n\nLately, ignoring or actively opposing compatibility with earlier versions of Perl has come\ninto vogue. Sometimes, a change is proposed which wants to usurp syntax which previously had\nanother meaning. Sometimes, a change wants to improve previously-crazy semantics.\n\nDown this road lies madness.\n\nRequiring end-user programmers to change just a few language constructs, even language\nconstructs which no well-educated developer would ever intentionally use is tantamount to\nsaying \"you should not upgrade to a new release of Perl unless you have 100% test coverage\nand can do a full manual audit of your codebase.\" If we were to have tools capable of\nreliably upgrading Perl source code from one version of Perl to another, this concern could\nbe significantly mitigated.\n\nWe want to ensure that Perl continues to grow and flourish in the coming years and decades,\nbut not at the expense of our user community.\n\nExisting syntax and semantics should only be marked for destruction in very limited\ncircumstances. If they are believed to be very rarely used, stand in the way of actual\nimprovement to the Perl language or perl interpreter, and if affected code can be easily\nupdated to continue working, they may be considered for removal. When in doubt, caution\ndictates that we will favor backward compatibility. When a feature is deprecated, a\nstatement of reasoning describing the decision process will be posted, and a link to it will\nbe provided in the relevant perldelta documents.\n\nUsing a lexical pragma to enable or disable legacy behavior should be considered when\nappropriate, and in the absence of any pragma legacy behavior should be enabled. Which\nbackward-incompatible changes are controlled implicitly by a 'use v5.x.y' is a decision which\nshould be made by the steering council in consultation with the community.\n\nHistorically, we've held ourselves to a far higher standard than backward-compatibility --\nbugward-compatibility. Any accident of implementation or unintentional side-effect of\nrunning some bit of code has been considered to be a feature of the language to be defended\nwith the same zeal as any other feature or functionality. No matter how frustrating these\nunintentional features may be to us as we continue to improve Perl, these unintentional\nfeatures often deserve our protection. It is very important that existing software written\nin Perl continue to work correctly. If end-user developers have adopted a bug as a feature,\nwe need to treat it as such.\n\nNew syntax and semantics which don't break existing language constructs and syntax have a\nmuch lower bar. They merely need to prove themselves to be useful, elegant, well designed,\nand well tested. In most cases, these additions will be marked as experimental for some\ntime. See below for more on that.\n", "subsections": [ { "name": "Terminology", "content": "To make sure we're talking about the same thing when we discuss the removal of features or\nfunctionality from the Perl core, we have specific definitions for a few words and phrases.\n\nexperimental\nIf something in the Perl core is marked as experimental, we may change its behaviour,\ndeprecate or remove it without notice. While we'll always do our best to smooth the\ntransition path for users of experimental features, you should contact the perl5-porters\nmailinglist if you find an experimental feature useful and want to help shape its future.\n\nExperimental features must be experimental in two stable releases before being marked\nnon-experimental. Experimental features will only have their experimental status revoked\nwhen they no longer have any design-changing bugs open against them and when they have\nremained unchanged in behavior for the entire length of a development cycle. In other\nwords, a feature present in v5.20.0 may be marked no longer experimental in v5.22.0 if\nand only if its behavior is unchanged throughout all of v5.21.\n\ndeprecated\nIf something in the Perl core is marked as deprecated, we may remove it from the core in\nthe future, though we might not. Generally, backward incompatible changes will have\ndeprecation warnings for two release cycles before being removed, but may be removed\nafter just one cycle if the risk seems quite low or the benefits quite high.\n\nAs of Perl 5.12, deprecated features and modules warn the user as they're used. When a\nmodule is deprecated, it will also be made available on CPAN. Installing it from CPAN\nwill silence deprecation warnings for that module.\n\nIf you use a deprecated feature or module and believe that its removal from the Perl core\nwould be a mistake, please contact the perl5-porters mailinglist and plead your case. We\ndon't deprecate things without a good reason, but sometimes there's a counterargument we\nhaven't considered. Historically, we did not distinguish between \"deprecated\" and\n\"discouraged\" features.\n\ndiscouraged\nFrom time to time, we may mark language constructs and features which we consider to have\nbeen mistakes as discouraged. Discouraged features aren't currently candidates for\nremoval, but we may later deprecate them if they're found to stand in the way of a\nsignificant improvement to the Perl core.\n\nremoved\nOnce a feature, construct or module has been marked as deprecated, we may remove it from\nthe Perl core. Unsurprisingly, we say we've removed these things. When a module is\nremoved, it will no longer ship with Perl, but will continue to be available on CPAN.\n" } ] }, "MAINTENANCE BRANCHES": { "content": "New releases of maintenance branches should only contain changes that fall into one of the\n\"acceptable\" categories set out below, but must not contain any changes that fall into one of\nthe \"unacceptable\" categories. (For example, a fix for a crashing bug must not be included\nif it breaks binary compatibility.)\n\nIt is not necessary to include every change meeting these criteria, and in general the focus\nshould be on addressing security issues, crashing bugs, regressions and serious installation\nissues. The temptation to include a plethora of minor changes that don't affect the\ninstallation or execution of perl (e.g. spelling corrections in documentation) should be\nresisted in order to reduce the overall risk of overlooking something. The intention is to\ncreate maintenance releases which are both worthwhile and which users can have full\nconfidence in the stability of. (A secondary concern is to avoid burning out the maint-\nrelease manager or overwhelming other committers voting on changes to be included (see\n\"Getting changes into a maint branch\" below).)\n\nThe following types of change may be considered acceptable, as long as they do not also fall\ninto any of the \"unacceptable\" categories set out below:\n\n• Patches that fix CVEs or security issues. These changes should be passed using the\nsecurity reporting mechanism rather than applied directly; see \"SECURITY VULNERABILITY\nCONTACT INFORMATION\" in perlsec.\n\n• Patches that fix crashing bugs, assertion failures and memory corruption but which do not\notherwise change perl's functionality or negatively impact performance.\n\n• Patches that fix regressions in perl's behavior relative to previous releases, no matter\nhow old the regression, since some people may upgrade from very old versions of perl to\nthe latest version.\n\n• Patches that fix bugs in features that were new in the corresponding 5.x.0 stable\nrelease.\n\n• Patches that fix anything which prevents or seriously impacts the build or installation\nof perl.\n\n• Portability fixes, such as changes to Configure and the files in the hints/ folder.\n\n• Minimal patches that fix platform-specific test failures.\n\n• Documentation updates that correct factual errors, explain significant bugs or\ndeficiencies in the current implementation, or fix broken markup.\n\n• Updates to dual-life modules should consist of minimal patches to fix crashing bugs or\nsecurity issues (as above). Any changes made to dual-life modules for which CPAN is\ncanonical should be coordinated with the upstream author.\n\nThe following types of change are NOT acceptable:\n\n• Patches that break binary compatibility. (Please talk to the steering council.)\n\n• Patches that add or remove features.\n\n• Patches that add new warnings or errors or deprecate features.\n\n• Ports of Perl to a new platform, architecture or OS release that involve changes to the\nimplementation.\n\n• New versions of dual-life modules should NOT be imported into maint. Those belong in the\nnext stable series.\n\nIf there is any question about whether a given patch might merit inclusion in a maint\nrelease, then it almost certainly should not be included.\n", "subsections": [ { "name": "Getting changes into a maint branch", "content": "Historically, only the single-person project manager cherry-picked changes from bleadperl\ninto maintperl. This has scaling problems. At the same time, maintenance branches of stable\nversions of Perl need to be treated with great care. To that end, as of Perl 5.12, we have a\nnew process for maint branches.\n\nAny committer may cherry-pick any commit from blead to a maint branch by first adding an\nentry to the relevant voting file in the maint-votes branch announcing the commit as a\ncandidate for back-porting, and then waiting for at least two other committers to add their\nvotes in support of this (i.e. a total of at least three votes is required before a commit\nmay be back-ported).\n\nMost of the work involved in both rounding up a suitable set of candidate commits and cherry-\npicking those for which three votes have been cast will be done by the maint branch release\nmanager, but anyone else is free to add other proposals if they're keen to ensure certain\nfixes don't get overlooked or fear they already have been.\n\nOther voting mechanisms may also be used instead (e.g. sending mail to perl5-porters and at\nleast two other committers responding to the list giving their assent), as long as the same\nnumber of votes is gathered in a transparent manner. Specifically, proposals of which\nchanges to cherry-pick must be visible to everyone on perl5-porters so that the views of\neveryone interested may be heard.\n\nIt is not necessary for voting to be held on cherry-picking perldelta entries associated with\nchanges that have already been cherry-picked, nor for the maint-release manager to obtain\nvotes on changes required by the Porting/releasemanagersguide.pod where such changes can be\napplied by the means of cherry-picking from blead.\n" } ] }, "CONTRIBUTED MODULES": { "content": "", "subsections": [ { "name": "A Social Contract about Artistic Control", "content": "What follows is a statement about artistic control, defined as the ability of authors of\npackages to guide the future of their code and maintain control over their work. It is a\nrecognition that authors should have control over their work, and that it is a responsibility\nof the rest of the Perl community to ensure that they retain this control. It is an attempt\nto document the standards to which we, as Perl developers, intend to hold ourselves. It is\nan attempt to write down rough guidelines about the respect we owe each other as Perl\ndevelopers.\n\nThis statement is not a legal contract. This statement is not a legal document in any way,\nshape, or form. Perl is distributed under the GNU Public License and under the Artistic\nLicense; those are the precise legal terms. This statement isn't about the law or licenses.\nIt's about community, mutual respect, trust, and good-faith cooperation.\n\nWe recognize that the Perl core, defined as the software distributed with the heart of Perl\nitself, is a joint project on the part of all of us. From time to time, a script, module, or\nset of modules (hereafter referred to simply as a \"module\") will prove so widely useful\nand/or so integral to the correct functioning of Perl itself that it should be distributed\nwith the Perl core. This should never be done without the author's explicit consent, and a\nclear recognition on all parts that this means the module is being distributed under the same\nterms as Perl itself. A module author should realize that inclusion of a module into the\nPerl core will necessarily mean some loss of control over it, since changes may occasionally\nhave to be made on short notice or for consistency with the rest of Perl.\n\nOnce a module has been included in the Perl core, however, everyone involved in maintaining\nPerl should be aware that the module is still the property of the original author unless the\noriginal author explicitly gives up their ownership of it. In particular:\n\n• The version of the module in the Perl core should still be considered the work of the\noriginal author. All patches, bug reports, and so forth should be fed back to them.\nTheir development directions should be respected whenever possible.\n\n• Patches may be applied by the steering council without the explicit cooperation of the\nmodule author if and only if they are very minor, time-critical in some fashion (such as\nurgent security fixes), or if the module author cannot be reached. Those patches must\nstill be given back to the author when possible, and if the author decides on an\nalternate fix in their version, that fix should be strongly preferred unless there is a\nserious problem with it. Any changes not endorsed by the author should be marked as\nsuch, and the contributor of the change acknowledged.\n\n• The version of the module distributed with Perl should, whenever possible, be the latest\nversion of the module as distributed by the author (the latest non-beta version in the\ncase of public Perl releases), although the steering council may hold off on upgrading\nthe version of the module distributed with Perl to the latest version until the latest\nversion has had sufficient testing.\n\nIn other words, the author of a module should be considered to have final say on\nmodifications to their module whenever possible (bearing in mind that it's expected that\neveryone involved will work together and arrive at reasonable compromises when there are\ndisagreements).\n\nAs a last resort, however:\n\nIf the author's vision of the future of their module is sufficiently different from the\nvision of the steering council and perl5-porters as a whole so as to cause serious problems\nfor Perl, the steering council may choose to formally fork the version of the module in the\nPerl core from the one maintained by the author. This should not be done lightly and should\nalways if at all possible be done only after direct input from Larry. If this is done, it\nmust then be made explicit in the module as distributed with the Perl core that it is a\nforked version and that while it is based on the original author's work, it is no longer\nmaintained by them. This must be noted in both the documentation and in the comments in the\nsource of the module.\n\nAgain, this should be a last resort only. Ideally, this should never happen, and every\npossible effort at cooperation and compromise should be made before doing this. If it does\nprove necessary to fork a module for the overall health of Perl, proper credit must be given\nto the original author in perpetuity and the decision should be constantly re-evaluated to\nsee if a remerging of the two branches is possible down the road.\n\nIn all dealings with contributed modules, everyone maintaining Perl should keep in mind that\nthe code belongs to the original author, that they may not be on perl5-porters at any given\ntime, and that a patch is not official unless it has been integrated into the author's copy\nof the module. To aid with this, and with points #1, #2, and #3 above, contact information\nfor the authors of all contributed modules should be kept with the Perl distribution.\n\nFinally, the Perl community as a whole recognizes that respect for ownership of code, respect\nfor artistic control, proper credit, and active effort to prevent unintentional code skew or\ncommunication gaps is vital to the health of the community and Perl itself. Members of a\ncommunity should not normally have to resort to rules and laws to deal with each other, and\nthis document, although it contains rules so as to be clear, is about an attitude and general\napproach. The first step in any dispute should be open communication, respect for opposing\nviews, and an attempt at a compromise. In nearly every circumstance nothing more will be\nnecessary, and certainly no more drastic measure should be used until every avenue of\ncommunication and discussion has failed.\n" } ] }, "DOCUMENTATION": { "content": "Perl's documentation is an important resource for our users. It's incredibly important for\nPerl's documentation to be reasonably coherent and to accurately reflect the current\nimplementation.\n\nJust as P5P collectively maintains the codebase, we collectively maintain the documentation.\nWriting a particular bit of documentation doesn't give an author control of the future of\nthat documentation. At the same time, just as source code changes should match the style of\ntheir surrounding blocks, so should documentation changes.\n\nExamples in documentation should be illustrative of the concept they're explaining.\nSometimes, the best way to show how a language feature works is with a small program the\nreader can run without modification. More often, examples will consist of a snippet of code\ncontaining only the \"important\" bits. The definition of \"important\" varies from snippet to\nsnippet. Sometimes it's important to declare \"use strict\" and \"use warnings\", initialize all\nvariables and fully catch every error condition. More often than not, though, those things\nobscure the lesson the example was intended to teach.\n\nAs Perl is developed by a global team of volunteers, our documentation often contains\nspellings which look funny to somebody. Choice of American/British/Other spellings is left\nas an exercise for the author of each bit of documentation. When patching documentation, try\nto emulate the documentation around you, rather than changing the existing prose.\n\nIn general, documentation should describe what Perl does \"now\" rather than what it used to\ndo. It's perfectly reasonable to include notes in documentation about how behaviour has\nchanged from previous releases, but, with very few exceptions, documentation isn't \"dual-\nlife\" -- it doesn't need to fully describe how all old versions used to work.\n", "subsections": [] }, "STANDARDS OF CONDUCT": { "content": "The official forum for the development of perl is the perl5-porters mailing list, mentioned\nabove, and its bugtracker at GitHub. Posting to the list and the bugtracker is not a right:\nall participants in discussion are expected to adhere to a standard of conduct.\n\n• Always be civil.\n\n• Heed the moderators.\n\nCivility is simple: stick to the facts while avoiding demeaning remarks, belittling other\nindividuals, sarcasm, or a presumption of bad faith. It is not enough to be factual. You\nmust also be civil. Responding in kind to incivility is not acceptable. If you relay\notherwise-unposted comments to the list from a third party, you take responsibility for the\ncontent of those comments, and you must therefore ensure that they are civil.\n\nWhile civility is required, kindness is encouraged; if you have any doubt about whether you\nare being civil, simply ask yourself, \"Am I being kind?\" and aspire to that.\n\nIf the list moderators tell you that you are not being civil, carefully consider how your\nwords have appeared before responding in any way. Were they kind? You may protest, but\nrepeated protest in the face of a repeatedly reaffirmed decision is not acceptable.\nRepeatedly protesting about the moderators' decisions regarding a third party is also\nunacceptable, as is continuing to initiate off-list contact with the moderators about their\ndecisions.\n\nUnacceptable behavior will result in a public and clearly identified warning. A second\ninstance of unacceptable behavior from the same individual will result in removal from the\nmailing list and GitHub issue tracker, for a period of one calendar month. The rationale for\nthis is to provide an opportunity for the person to change the way they act.\n\nAfter the time-limited ban has been lifted, a third instance of unacceptable behavior will\nresult in a further public warning. A fourth or subsequent instance will result in an\nindefinite ban. The rationale is that, in the face of an apparent refusal to change\nbehavior, we must protect other community members from future unacceptable actions. The\nmoderators may choose to lift an indefinite ban if the person in question affirms they will\nnot transgress again.\n\nRemovals, like warnings, are public.\n\nThe list of moderators will be public knowledge. At present, it is: Karen Etheridge, Neil\nBowers, Nicholas Clark, Ricardo Signes, Todd Rinaldo.\n", "subsections": [] }, "CREDITS": { "content": "\"Social Contract about Contributed Modules\" originally by Russ Allbery and\nthe perl5-porters.\n\n\n\nperl v5.34.0 2025-07-25 PERLPOLICY(1)", "subsections": [] } } } }