BUG #18816: pg16 requires perl 5.14+ but is not documented

On 2025-02-17 Mo 10:09 AM, PG Bug reporting form wrote:

The following bug has been logged on the website:

Bug reference: 18816
Logged by: David Gilman
Email address:davidgilman1@gmail.com
PostgreSQL version: 16.7
Operating system: n/a
Description:

The PostgreSQL 16 branch's configure script checks to see if perl 5.14+ is
installed (see config/perl.m4) but there is no comment in the documentation
that perl 5.14+ is required in the postgresql16 docs like there is in the
postgresql17 docs. See doc pages:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/install-requirements.html
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/install-requirements.html

Prior to v17, perl was not a hard requirement if you were building from
a tarball, only if building from git. That changed with commit 721856ff24b3.

The v16 docs state (correctly):

*

Perl 5.14 or later is needed to build from a Git checkout, or if you
changed the input files for any of the build steps that use Perl
scripts. If building on Windows you will need Perl in any case. Perl
is also required to run some test suites.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan
EDB:https://www.enterprisedb.com

PG Bug reporting form <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:

The PostgreSQL 16 branch's configure script checks to see if perl 5.14+ is
installed (see config/perl.m4) but there is no comment in the documentation
that perl 5.14+ is required in the postgresql16 docs like there is in the
postgresql17 docs. See doc pages:

The v16 code and documentation changes were made at the same time, here:

https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git&amp;a=commitdiff&amp;h=4c1532763

We rearranged the installation documentation in v17, so the comments
about perl version may be in a different place now. But v16 certainly
documented it in the place that was appropriate at the time.

regards, tom lane