Perl version 5.14.1 released before the version 5.12.4?

Question

perl-5.12.4 release date 20 Jun 2011

perl-5.14.1 release date 17 Jun 2011

Source: CPAN

I didn't get this. Version 5.14.1 released before the version 5.12.4?

Explain it to me please.

Answer 1

perl-5.12.4 is a maintenance version of the 5.12 line, it's only 200 lines of changes (see http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.4/pod/perl5124delta.pod), just a couple of bug fixes, and making sure that 5.12 can work on Ubuntu for example.

5.14.1 is the latest version in the 5.14 line. It's modern, it's shiny, this is the one you want!

Answer 2

This is not the first time there has been maintenance releases after a new version has been released

• 5.6.2 came after 5.8
• 5.8.9 came after 5.10
• 5.12.4 came after 5.14

When the developers of Perl are working on one version (currently 5.16), they still maintain the previous two versions (currently 5.12 and 5.14).

The changes that go into maintenance releases are very limited, though. No new features are added, for starters. Primarily, the updates will only include:

• Security fixes.
• Regression fixes. (e.g. something worked in 5.10, but didn't in 5.12.3 could be fixed in 5.12.4)
• Build fixes. (e.g. Making it so 5.12 compiles with new or different compilers)

That means 5.12.4 will not have the new features that were added to 5.14.0, and it won't have most bug fixes either. The point is to make it as safe as possible to get critical fixes.