[ensembl-dev] Perl Version Upgrade

Thu Jan 9 18:16:02 GMT 2014

Hi Andy, I work with Ed and have been following the thread about the upgrade from Perl 5.8 to 5.14 with Ensembl version 75. 

We are running Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) which upgrades to Perl 5.12.4 using standard Ubuntu methods.  We use the Perl Ensembl API, regularly.  Since 11.10 is no longer supported by Ubuntu, we would have to force the upgrade to 5.14 – via CPAN.  My issue with this is that it's possible there are incompatibilities with Perl  5.14 and Ubuntu 11.10 that exist and won’t be fixed because 11.10 is no longer supported.   

I believe a staged upgrade to 5.10 would solve things because what we use now (5.12.4) should be compatible (?) with any changes regarding upgrade to Perl 5.10.  This staged upgrade would give us (and others) time to do necessary upgrades to OS (like 11.10 to 12.04) at a less than rushed pace.

Thanks,

-Jennifer

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID

Andy Yates <ayates at ebi.ac.uk> wrote:

>Hi Ed,
>
>Thanks for the response as this is useful information to know. So I have a number of questions:
>
>1). What kind of user are you primarily? Are you a Perl API, website or tool (VEP) user?
>2). Would a two release delay in upgrade (75 & 76) give adequate reaction time?
>3). AFAIK Ubuntu Lucid ships with Perl 5.10.1. Would you be more comfortable with a staged migration. This could be useful for us as it would minimise the amount of changes we would have to back-out and minimise the chances of APIs breaking
>
>We do want to move away from perl 5.8 as quickly as possible since we do not maintain a Perl 5.8 distribution internally. It is not possible for us to detect when we make 5.8+ only changes to the API ATMO*.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Andy
>
>* Now our projects are hosted at GitHub we are looking into using TravisCI. This can test multiple Perl versions. However not all areas of the project will have this level of continuous integration
>
>------------
>Andrew Yates - Ensembl Support Coordinator
>European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)
>European Molecular Biology Laboratory
>Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
>Hinxton
>Cambridge CB10 1SD
>Tel: +44-(0)1223-492538
>Fax: +44-(0)1223-494468
>http://www.ensembl.org/
>
>On 9 Jan 2014, at 02:39, Ed Gray <gray_ed at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Andy,
>>  
>> Frankly for many of us, we have smallish teams that need a bit more time to react to discontinuing support for the old perl.  Many of us are still on Ubuntu 11.
>>  
>> Ed
>> 
>>  
>> > From: ap5 at sanger.ac.uk
>> > Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 13:30:18 +0000
>> > To: dev at ensembl.org
>> > Subject: Re: [ensembl-dev] Perl Version Upgrade
>> > 
>> > Not as far as I know - the new BLAST code doesn't use it, and that was our only outstanding dependency. We'll confirm that, though, when we're sure that the new interface will make it into 75.
>> > 
>> > Cheers
>> > 
>> > Anne
>> > 
>> > 
>> > On 8 Jan 2014, at 13:27, Hans-Rudolf Hotz <hrh at fmi.ch> wrote:
>> > 
>> > > Hi Andy
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > Thank you very much for the 'heads-up'
>> > > 
>> > > Just a quick question in order to double check: Ensembl 75 will still require the old BioPerl version (i.e. BioPerl 1.2.3) ?
>> > > 
>> > > Regards, Hans
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > On 01/08/2014 03:33 AM, dev-request at ensembl.org wrote:
>> > > 
>> > >> 
>> > >> Message: 1
>> > >> Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2014 16:14:39 +0000
>> > >> From: Andy Yates <ayates at ebi.ac.uk>
>> > >> Subject: [ensembl-dev] Perl Version Upgrade
>> > >> To: Ensembl developers list <dev at ensembl.org>
>> > >> Message-ID: <8918159B-5D53-435F-8DFD-EB235DC877AB at ebi.ac.uk>
>> > >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>> > >> 
>> > >> Dear all,
>> > >> 
>> > >> In 2013 the Ensembl team spent a significant amount of time upgrading our internal Perl version from 5.8 to 5.14 (totalling a 9 year development gap). This was in part motivated by the improved runtime and memory consumption seen in later versions of Perl especially in the 5.14 development tree. We were also motivated by some new language constructs only available with later versions of Perl (smart match operators, non-destructive regular expressions, defined OR operators).
>> > >> 
>> > >> From release 75 we wish to increase the minimal Perl version for Ensembl from 5.8 to 5.14.
>> > >> 
>> > >> Many OS ship with compatible versions of Perl out of the box; to check what version of Perl you are currently running you should execute the following from your command line (anything with 5.14 or above is great):
>> > >> 
>> > >> $ perl -v
>> > >> This is perl 5, version 14, subversion 4 (v5.14.4) built for darwin-thread-multi-2level
>> > >> 
>> > >> Should you have any questions or concerns about this move please get in touch ASAP either here on dev or via helpdesk.
>> > >> 
>> > >> All the best,
>> > >> 
>> > >> Andy
>> > >> 
>> > >> ------------
>> > >> Andrew Yates - Ensembl Support Coordinator
>> > >> European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)
>> > >> European Molecular Biology Laboratory
>> > >> Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
>> > >> Hinxton
>> > >> Cambridge CB10 1SD
>> > >> Tel: +44-(0)1223-492538
>> > >> Fax: +44-(0)1223-494468
>> > >> http://www.ensembl.org/
>> > >> 
>> > >> 
>> > >> 
>> > > 
>> > > -- 
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > 
>> > > Hans-Rudolf Hotz, PhD
>> > > Bioinformatics Support
>> > > 
>> > > Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
>> > > Maulbeerstrasse 66
>> > > 4058 Basel/Switzerland
>> > > 
>> > > _______________________________________________
>> > > Dev mailing list Dev at ensembl.org
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>> > > Ensembl Blog: http://www.ensembl.info/
>> > 
>> > Anne Parker
>> > Ensembl Web Production Manager
>> > http://www.ensembl.org
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
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