minimum perl version

Hi,

Split off from the meson thread at https://postgr.es/m/990067.1662138678%40sss.pgh.pa.us

On 2022-09-02 13:11:18 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> > On 2022-09-02 14:17:26 +0700, John Naylor wrote:
> >> + # FIXME: -output option is only available in perl 5.9.3 - but that's
> >> + # probably a fine minimum requirement?
> >>
> >> Since we've retired some buildfarm animals recently, it seems the
> >> oldest perl there is 5.14? ... which came out in 2011, so it seems
> >> later on we could just set that as the minimum.
>
> > At the moment we document 5.8.3 as our minimum, supposedly based on some
> > buildfarm animal - but that's probably outdated.
>
> Yeah, definitely. prairiedog was the only animal running such an old
> version, and it's gone. I don't think we have anything testing ancient
> bison or flex anymore, either. I'm a fan of actually testing whatever
> we claim as the minimum supported version of any tool, so there's some
> work to be done here, on buildfarm config or docs or both.

5.8.3 is from 2004-Jan-14, that's impressive :). I don't see any benefit in
setting up a buildfarm animal running that old a version.

For the meson stuff it'd suffice to set 5.9.3. as the minimum version for
plperl (or I could try to work around it). However, supporting a perl version
from 2006-Jan-28 doesn't strike me as particularly useful either.

Relevent somewhat recent discussion / work:
https://postgr.es/m/87y278s6iq.fsf%40wibble.ilmari.org
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/E1mYY6Z-0006OL-QN%40gemulon.postgresql.org

I looked at which buildfarm animals currently use 5.14 (mentioned by John),
and it's frogfish, snapper and skate. The latter two do build with plperl.

I started a query on the buildfarm machine to collect the perl versions, but
it's just awfully slow...

Greetings,

Andres Freund