Win32: synch with CPAN version 0.59

[jkeenan]

As discussed in:
https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2022/05/msg263707.html

As explained in the p5p list thread starting at the URL above, since we're in code freeze, this merge request should be completed only once perl-5.37.0 has been released and our next development cycle has begun. However, I'm assigning this to the production release manager for his consideration.

[pbo-linaro]

Showing that this failure is the only one left for passing testsuite on Windows on Arm: #19556 (comment)

[Leont]

Should this be a 5.36 blocker? It looks to me like it should be

[jkeenan]

On 5/14/22 08:34, Leon Timmermans wrote: Should this be a 5.36 blocker? It looks to me like it should be

This is going to be the production release manager's call, but I argue that it should *not* be a 5.36.0-release-blocker. As far as I can tell, until three days ago we (P5P) were completely unaware of the existence of the Linaro-Microsoft-Qualcomm team's efforts to build applications on the OS/Platform combination of MSWin32 and ARM (as mentioned in https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2022/05/msg263707.html). While perl has been built on that operating system and that platform *separately*, I don't think we've ever previously received smoke-test reports or bug tickets about building perl on their *combination*. So we're not currently set up to do ongoing QA on this combination. That being the case, to designate this p.r. as a release blocker would mean delaying the release of 5.36 for all other OS/Platform combinations. The benefit is too small to warrant that delay -- especially given the fact that for decades the common expectation has been that no one will build and install perl on Windows "right out of the box," i.e., directly from the P5P source code as opposed to some packaging of perl such as ActivePerl or Strawberry Perl. We (P5P) certainly have been remiss with respect to Perl on Win32. AFAICT, right now there is exactly *one* person on the planet generating smoke-test reports for Perl 5 blead on Win32. Just one. Moreover, one of our principal smoke-test aggregators has for some reason simply stopped reporting results on Win32 (https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=142752). With regard to Windows we are pretty much flying blind. We need to correct these problems in our QA apparatus. Simultaneously we need to establish more regular communication with the people contributing to https://github.com/perl-libwin32/win32/. But I don't think we should further delay perl-5.36.0 on this account.

[pbo-linaro]

As @jkeenan said, it's not worth blocking the release planned.

Our goal here was simply to contribute for this new platform, before investigating more on this. It's a difficult situation, because there is no public free machine (any CI runner) available now. On our side, we use Azure with Linaro's account (arm64 machines have been available for a few weeks), but of course, it's not free.

It's a problem we have with the different projects we are contributing to, because accepting changes people can't check by themselves is not an ideal situation.