Perl vs Perl-Vista

[sergeevabc]

OS Windows 7 x64, APPerl 0.6.1

$ perl.com -v

Actually, even v0.0.1 crashes.

However, perl-vista.com works.

$ perl-vista.com -v

This is perl 5, version 36, subversion 3 (v5.36.3) built for x86_64-cosmo
(with 9 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2023, Larry Wall

But why?

[G4Vi]

APPerl is built on the Cosmopolitan Libc which unfortunately abandoned Vista and and Windows 7 support, I forget exactly why, but it was something to do with how Windows manages memory. Cosmo's currently supported platforms is listed at https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/?tab=readme-ov-file#support-vector, on Windows requires Windows 8, not sure if it's actually 8.1

The vista build uses https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/tree/vista?tab=readme-ov-file#cosmopolitan-vista-edition , however the fork has proven to be near impossible to maintain with all the upstream cosmopolitan changes. O_NONBLOCK sockets and installing modules via ADDING CPAN DISTRIBUTIONS is broken on the vista build.

Unless someone jumps in to support the Cosmopolitan vista fork, the vista build will probably be removed in the next APPerl release / when I finally build a new desktop and fully migrate off of Windows 7 as they use a different toolchain setup being pre-cosmocc.

[sergeevabc]

Unless someone jumps in to support the Cosmopolitan vista fork, the vista build will probably be removed in the next APPerl release…

Oh, no! 🥹 But I guess Perl is quite a mature tool that hardly requires regular updates, so the existing Vista fork can be used for at least another decade? Right now it is 5.36.3 (autumn 2023), whereas the latest official Perl version is 5.40.0 (summer 2024).