[Bioperl-l] Bioperl tests: Test, Test::Simple, Test::More?

[Torsten Seemann]

 >> Frankly, I think we should change that to v 5.8; it's been out for
 >> over three years now.  perl 5.10 isn't too far off (let alone Perl6)
 >> and perl 5.005, according to CPAN, is 8 years old.

> A year or so ago some key servers at the Sanger were still on 5.005.
> I believe due to some code constructs (regex or some such?) in a couple 
> of modules we are now effectively requiring 5.6.x. Mac OSX 10.2 will 
> have 5.6.0, so requiring a higher version means you do not support 
> Jaguar anymore.

Well that suggests we should try and make 5.6 the minimum.
My quick audit below suggests we already require it anyway.

But we need to audit what Perl features any modules, especially core 
ones, are using which may came from 5.8. Here's a quick summary:

Perl 5.6 - http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/04/whatsnew.html
% perldoc perl56delta

- unicode
- threading
- version tuples
- lexical warnings
- lvalue subs
- weak references
	Bio/SeqFeature/Gene/GeneStructure.pm ?
- posix character classes [: :]
	Bio/LiveSeq/IO/Loader.pm ?
	Bio/Tools/GuessSeqFormat.pm ?
- binary numbers 0bNNNNN
- 'our' variables
	Bio/DB/Biblio/eutils.pm
	Bio/DB/Expression/geo.pm
	Bio/DB/Expression.pm
	Bio/SeqIO/chaos.pm
	Bio/Tools/Run/StandAloneBlast.pm
	Bio/Tools/Run/.#StandAloneBlast.pm.1.57
	Bio/Tools/SiRNA/Ruleset/tuschl.pm
	Bio/Tools/WebBlat.pm
- auto vivify file handles
- 3 argument open()
- largefile support
	Surely something, perhaps the Index or GFF3 stuff?


Perl 5.8 - http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2003/01/16/whatsnew.html
% perldoc perl58delta

- unicode proper
- threading proper
- new PerlIO magic
- safe signals
- Test::More
	Chris F desires to use this.
- no pseudo hashes
- blessing a ref into another ref
- self tying arrays and hashes
- no $* in regexp
- pack/unpack D/F


-- 
Dr Torsten Seemann               http://www.vicbioinformatics.com
Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium, Monash University, Australia