Perl 5.14.0 released

    At the start of any project, I'm programming primarily to please
    myself. (The two chief virtues in a programmer are laziness and
    impatience.)  After a while somebody looks over my shoulder and says,
    "That's neat. It'd be neater if it did such-and-so."  So the thing
    gets neater. Pretty soon (a year or two) I have an rn, a warp,
    a patch, or a perl. One of these years I'll have a metaconfig.

    I then say to myself, "I don't want my life's work to die when this
    computer is scrapped, so I should let some other people use this.
    If I ask my company to sell this, it'll never see the light of day,
    and nobody would pay much for it anyway. If I sell it myself, I'll
    be in trouble with my company, to whom I signed my life away when I
    was hired. If I give it away, I can pretend it was worthless in the
    first place, so my company won't care. In any event, it's easier
    to ask forgiveness than permission."

    So a freely distributable program is born. 

            -- Larry Wall, January 12, 1988 <992@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>  

On behalf of perl5-porters It gives me great pleasure to announce the
release of Perl 5.14.0.

SHA-1 signatures for this release:

    da5e991f9d4a6728eccfc190c5ddbed3c02a94fe  perl-5.14.0.tar.bz2
    7e2aab2101b087f6f2b9405b626a3f064c23693d  perl-5.14.0.tar.gz

You can download this release from your nearest CPAN mirror or from:
    
    http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.14.0/

Some notable changes in this release include:

    * Unicode 6.0 support, along with many, many improvements to our
      Unicode-related features

    * Improved support for IPv6

    * Significantly easier autoconfiguration of the CPAN client

    * A new /r flag which makes s/// substitutions non-destructive
    
    * New regular expression flags to control whether matched
      strings should be treated as ASCII or Unicode 

    * New "package Foo { }" syntax 

    * Uses less memory and CPU than previous releases

Perl 5.14.0 includes numerous other new features, optimizations and
bugfixes. You can find a complete list of these changes on the web at:

  http://search.cpan.org/~jesse/perl-5.14.0/pod/perldelta.pod

Based on extensive testing over the past 3 months, we believe that Perl
5.14.0 is ready for production deployments. However, you should never
blindly trust any software vendor. It is imperative that you test new
software before deploying it in production. If you discover issues
with this release, please use the "perlbug" tool to report them.

We will release Perl 5.14.1 in approximately one month. This
patch release will include corrections for any significant issues
discovered in this release but will not include new features or 
any incompatible changes.

Perl 5.16 will be released in the spring of 2012. If you'd like to help
shape Perl 5's future, please join us on the perl5-porters mailing list.

Perl 5.14.0 represents one year of development since Perl 5.12.0 and
contains nearly 550,000 lines of changes across nearly 3,000 files from
150 authors and committers.

Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant
community of users and developers. The following people are known to
have contributed to this release:

Aaron Crane, Abhijit Menon-Sen, Abigail, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason,
Alastair Douglas, Alexander Alekseev, Alexander Hartmaier, Alexandr
Ciornii, Alex Davies, Alex Vandiver, Ali Polatel, Allen Smith, Andreas
König, Andrew Rodland, Andy Armstrong, Andy Dougherty, Aristotle
Pagaltzis, Arkturuz, Arvan, A. Sinan Unur, Ben Morrow, Bo Lindbergh,
Boris Ratner, Brad Gilbert, Bram, brian d foy, Brian Phillips, Casey
West, Charles Bailey, Chas. Owens, Chip Salzenberg, Chris 'BinGOs'
Williams, chromatic, Craig A. Berry, Curtis Jewell, Dagfinn Ilmari
Mannsåker, Dan Dascalescu, Dave Rolsky, David Caldwell, David Cantrell,
David Golden, David Leadbeater, David Mitchell, David Wheeler, Eric
Brine, Father Chrysostomos, Fingle Nark, Florian Ragwitz, Frank Wiegand,
Franz Fasching, Gene Sullivan, George Greer, Gerard Goossen, Gisle Aas,
Goro Fuji, Grant McLean, gregor herrmann, H.Merijn Brand, Hongwen Qiu,
Hugo van der Sanden, Ian Goodacre, James E Keenan, James Mastros, Jan
Dubois, Jay Hannah, Jerry D. Hedden, Jesse Vincent, Jim Cromie, Jirka
Hru?ka, John Peacock, Joshua ben Jore, Joshua Pritikin, Karl Williamson,
Kevin Ryde, kmx, Lars D?????? ???, Larwan Berke, Leon Brocard, Leon
Timmermans, Lubomir Rintel, Lukas Mai, Maik Hentsche, Marty Pauley,
Marvin Humphrey, Matt Johnson, Matt S Trout, Max Maischein, Michael
Breen, Michael Fig, Michael G Schwern, Michael Parker, Michael Stevens,
Michael Witten, Mike Kelly, Moritz Lenz, Nicholas Clark, Nick Cleaton,
Nick Johnston, Nicolas Kaiser, Niko Tyni, Noirin Shirley, Nuno Carvalho,
Paul Evans, Paul Green, Paul Johnson, Paul Marquess, Peter J. Holzer,
Peter John Acklam, Peter Martini, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Piotr Fusik,
Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Reini Urban, Renee Baecker, Ricardo
Signes, Richard Möhn, Richard Soderberg, Rob Hoelz, Robin Barker, Ruslan
Zakirov, Salvador Fandiño, Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Shlomi Fish, Sinan
Unur, Sisyphus, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Müller, Steve Hay, Steven
Schubiger, Steve Peters, Sullivan Beck, Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, Tim Bunce,
Todd Rinaldo, Tom Christiansen, Tom Hukins, Tony Cook, Tye McQueen,
Vadim Konovalov, Vernon Lyon, Vincent Pit, Walt Mankowski, Wolfram
Humann, Yves Orton, Zefram, and Zsbán Ambrus.

This list is woefully incomplete as it is automatically generated from
version control history. In particular, it doesn't include the names of
the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues in previous
releases that helped make Perl 5.14.0 better. For a more complete list
of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the AUTHORS file
in the release tarball.

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN
modules included in Perl 5's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN
community for their contributions.

  Best,
  Jesse Vincent