Marpa::R2 support of 5.10.0

[Jeffrey Kegler]

I just announced a new release of Marpa::R2 4.000000.  It looks 100% OK except for one issue.  It accidentally regressed on support of Perl 5.10.0.

Perl 5.10.0 was buggy, and was rapidly replaced by 5.10.1.  It's hard to create a new installation of 5.10.0 -- perlbrew doesn't offer it, for example.  So I have to believe that all 5.10.0 installations are legacy installations from the period after 5.10.0 and before 5.10.1 (December 2007 to August 2009).  None of the people on the Marpa IRC channel run 5.10.0, or have much interest in it.  And CPAN testers coverage of 5.10.0 is very light, which is one reason this problem slipped by.

Nonetheless, I suspect there may be legacy sites which run, and will continue to run, 5.10.0.  For these users the latest release must be a serious annoyance.  Marpa::R2 is stable. This means on one hand that it is bug-fix only, but on the other hand that I make a stronger commitment not to leave legacy users and applications behind.

My alternatives are:

1.) Drop 5.10.0 support.

2.) Create a new Marpa::R2 which fixes the regression.

Technically, the 5.10.0 issue is caused by a trivial oversight of mine -- I back-ported two tests form R3 to R2.  R3 does *not* support 5.10.0, and the "use" line in its tests scripts reflects this.  I needed to change this line as part of the backport, and I overlooked this necessity.  This problem may turn out to hide other 5.10.0 issues, but my guess is that will not be the case.

I'd like feedback on this issue.  In particular, if you have any interest in 5.10.0 support, I very much want to hear from you.

Thanks!