[Changes for 1.002 - Jul 25, 2010]

• Fixes to VERSIONs of PAR::Setup*.
• No change in behaviour since 1.001

[Changes for 1.001 - Jul 25, 2010]

• RT #57399: extract everything (including DLLs) in File::ShareDir directories. Module::ScanDeps classifies everything in File::ShareDir directories as "data", but PAR uses it's own heuristics what to extract from a .par.
• Previous release was missing META.yml.
• Upgrade Module::Install to 1.00

[Changes for 1.000 - Apr 10, 2010]

• Fix defined(%hash) deprecation warning in PAR::Heavy

[Changes for 0.994 - Jul 23, 2009]

• Fix for the PAR::Heavy fix to the INC priority handling.

[Changes for 0.993 - Jul 19, 2009]

• The priority (fallback=>0) repositories should look at @PAR_INC for the loaded PARs instead of @PAR_INC_LAST.
• Don't reload from a downloaded .par file after installing it via "upgrade".
• Band-aid fix for the loading priority of shared librares from PAR files: Try PAR's first, the local stuff, then fallback-PARs.
• Initial support for running external perl scripts from a packaged interpreter.

[Changes for 0.992 - Apr 5, 2009]

• Support for non-fallback repositories.

[Changes for 0.991 - Mar 10, 2009]

• Promote previous release to stable release.

[Changes for 0.989_01 - Mar 2, 2009]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• Track the locations of all archives that have been extracted to $ENV{PAR_TEMP}/inc in this run.

[Changes for 0.988 - Mar 1, 2009]

• Promote previous release to stable release.

[Changes for 0.987_01 - Feb 20, 2009]
* New features

• Better cleanup of the $TMPDIR/par-$USER/temp-$$ directories that are typically used as caches in the "use PAR 'foo.par'" use case.
  • Bug fixes, etc.
• Very slightly more careful handling of PAR-specific environment variables.
• Cleanup of PAR::SetupTemp

[Changes for 0.986 - Feb 19, 2009]

• Promote to stable release.

[Changes for 0.985_01 - Feb 2, 2009]
* New features

• Support for the brand new static dependency resolution of PAR::Repository::Client 0.23.
  • Bug fixes, etc.
• Fix issue with running scripts from repositories: The INC hooks used to be set up too late for this to automatically pick up dependencies.

[Changes for 0.984 - Jan 25, 2009]
* New features

• Implemented the auto-upgrading option for loading and installing from PAR::Repositories.
  • Bug fixes, etc.
• Fix issue with PAR::Repository::Client development versions.

[Changes for 0.983 - Sep 12, 2008]
* Dependencies

• Require AutoLoader 5.67 which contains a PAR-related bug-fix.
• Require PAR::Dist 0.32.
  • Internal changes
• The full extraction process extractinc (which is triggered when a non--clean pp packaged executable is run) can now be forced to do the extraction (instead of doing if !-d).
• That same extraction routine now accepts Archive::Zip handles or file names.
• When, during the full extraction, the extracted paths are to be added to @INC, we now make sure they're not in @INC yet.

[Changes for 0.982 - Aug 10, 2008]
* New features

• Moved the routines that setup the PAR_TEMP environment variable to a separate module in the distribution so it's possible to use PAR::Repository::Client without loading all of PAR.
• Same for the function that sets up PAR_PROGNAME.
  • Bug fixes, etc.
• Upgrade to Module::Install 0.77
• Fix for running scripts from repositories.

[Changes for 0.980 - May 22, 2008]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• The function PAR::get_filehandle() that was introduced in 0.979 is really broken because Archive::Zip is broken. Turns out calling Archive::Zip::Member->fh() returns a file handle to the zip file, not a virtual/tied/whatever file handle to the member file. Therefore, the get_filehandle() function has been removed again until we work around this issue.
• Upgrade to Module::Install 0.73

[Changes for 0.979 - May 13, 2008]
* New features

• New function PAR::get_filehandle() returns a file handle for a file in any open .par files. Similar to read_file().

[Changes for 0.977 - Oct 19, 2007]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• HPUX doesn't like shared libraries being unlinked while in use. So don't try to do this even in clean mode. (Workaround will be in par.pl) (Scott Stanton)
• Fix DLL extraction file name matching in PAR::Heavy.
• Save two system calls per DLL during DLL extraction in PAR::Heavy.

[Changes for 0.976 - Jul 29, 2007]
* New features

• Use Archive::Unzip::Burst for unpacking binary executables if available. (This yields a significant startup speed-up.)
  • Bug fixes, etc.
    • Removed the auto_install feature from Makefile.PL. auto_install is conceptually broken.

[Changes for 0.973 - Feb 3, 2007]
* New features

• A new option for the "use PAR { ... };" use case: "no_shlib_unpack" signals that for this particular .par file, shared libraries that were added with the --lib option should not be extracted. This allows users to do their own cache handling for these libraries.
• PAR no longer unpacks all shared libraries by default but only those in the shlib/ directory (i.e. added with --lib). The shared libraries in auto/ should be picked up by the DynaLoader hack.
• If available, the prefork.pm module will be used to declare run-time dependencies for better memory use in forking environments.
• PAR now uses a caching mechanism to speed up the extraction process. This should particularly impact users of the "use PAR {file =>...}" form.
  • Bug fixes, etc.
• Applied an optimization of the unpacking process on case insensitive file systems.

[Changes for 0.972 - Jan 16, 2007]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• Removed PAR::AutoLoaderFix again. It wasn't working as expected all the time.
• To fix the problem AutoLoaderFix was supposed to fix, we now require AutoLoader 5.62 or newer which was just recently released to CPAN. (Previously only available from blead perl.)

[Changes for 0.971 - Jan 12, 2007]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• Fixed typo in the POD. (Jerrad Pierce)
• Included fix for a bug in AutoLoader.pm as shipped with all perl versions up to and including 5.8.8 as PAR::AutoLoaderFix. This cures a problem of endless looping when the %INC entry of a module doesn't point to a file of the same name. This may happen during "use PAR 'foo.par'".

[Changes for 0.970 - Dec 3, 2006]
* This release introduces some rather radical changes, so read carefully: * All PAR::Packer related logic has been moved to a separate distribution, PAR-Packer. This includes pp, parl and all packaging tools. This way, PAR becomes a pure-Perl distribution that can be most easily installed by users of software which requires PAR. Developers who want to use the PAR packager, pp, need to install the PAR-Packer distribution from CPAN.

[Changes for 0.961 - Nov 23, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• PAR::StrippedPARL::Base->write_parl() failed to work if the @INC directories contained spaces in 0.960. (Steven Mackenzie)
• Much improved documentation of the environment variables (Glenn Linderman)
• Fix for a spaces-in-pathname problem on Windows for t/30-current_exec.t. (Malcolm Nooning)

[Changes for 0.960 - Nov 21, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• myldr/Makefile.PL fix: Clean up myldr/usernamefrompwuid.h.
• Silence warning in myldr/internals.c.
• Silence warnings seen on Irix from myldr/env.c.
• Skip most tests in 10-parl-generation.t if there is no parl.
• Skip loading ActiveState Perl's "sitecustomize.pl" in par.pl.
• Load modules via require and other files via do.
• The parl-regeneration-for-every-pp-call addition of the 0.958 release should now also work for static perls.
  • New features
• Adressing RT ticket #6612: Now using getpwuid() to determine the user name if supported by the OS.

[Changes for 0.959 - Nov 12, 2006]
* This is just a hotfix release because 0.958 lacked META.yml. One day, I will switch from Module::Install to Module::Build...

[Changes for 0.958 - Oct 25, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• myldr/Makefile.PL fix: make static.o depend on mktmpdir.c, my_perl.c, my_par.c. (Roderich Schupp)
• Modules included with the -M option to pp were previously scanned for dependencies but not mapped through the %Module::ScanDeps::Preload hash for custom dependencies. That's fixed now.
• $ENV{PAR_RUN} isn't set by PAR::Packer any more because nothing in the PAR sources uses it. $ENV{PAR_RUN} is no longer used by PAR at all.
• Unified the environment variables which are looked at for finding the system's temporary directory.
  • New features
• During the build process, PAR appends stripped down copies of parl (and parldyn if applicable) to the data classes PAR::StrippedPARL::Static and ::Dynamic. These parls-without-embedded-modules are used for packaging so the formerly embedded modules are now packaged from the packaging system. (Instead of stemming from the system where PAR/parl was built.)
• The "use PAR { repository => $url };" syntax now also supports the use of user-constructed PAR::Repository::Client objects instead of an URL.
• The -F (module code filter) option now supports selective filtering of modules. The syntax is "-F FILTER=REGEX" or - as before - "-F FILTER". The regular expression is applied to the file name, of the module inside the PAR (e.g. Foo/Bar.pm). This behaviour was chosen over matching against the module name (e.g. Foo::Bar) because the filters can be applied to module-like and script files as well (.pl, .al, etc.).
• Updated PAR/FAQ.pod with the new FAQ's from the PAR wiki.
• Added a POD file PAR/Environment.pod which is intended to become an index of all environment variables PAR uses of its own or recognizes from its users. Still mostly a stub.

[Changes for 0.957 - Oct 24, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• Fix executable PARs top properly detect embedded scripts named the same as the executable. (Jesse Vincent)
• Comment out the call to par_current_exec_proc (in the C loader) which breaks the use of symlinks to pp-ed executables when not called with a path. (I.e. using a search in $PATH).

[Changes for 0.956 - Oct 3, 2006]
* This is another hotfix release. Fixed a mindless bug introduced in 0.955.

[Changes for 0.955 - Oct 3, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• 0.952 introduced removal of system module search paths if -B is in effect. This resulted in some valid PAR-related paths being removed as well. Fixed. Upgrading from 0.952 and 0.954 is suggested.
• Changed the use of hard-coded '/' as path-separator to using File::Spec.

[Changes for 0.954 - Sep 26, 2006]
* This release is equivalent to 0.953. The 0.953 CPAN upload is broken!

[Changes for 0.953 - Sep 18, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.

• Added optional POD tests.
• Modified -B so that if -B is in effect, all entries are stripped out of @INC except for the PAR hooks. This happens right before the script contained in the pp-ed binary is executed.

[Changes for 0.952 - Aug 22, 2006]

• New features
  • Added the "install" option to the PAR loading syntax. If specified, the contents of the PAR distribution are permanently installed. This requires PAR::Repository::Client 0.04.
• Bug fixes, etc.
  • Fixed broken META.yml in 0.951.

[Changes for 0.951 - Aug 12, 2006]
(This includes any changes up to 0.950.)

• New features
  • Introduced new PAR loading syntax and semantics: use PAR { file => 'path/to/par/or/URL' }; ==> equivalent to "use PAR 'path/to/par/or/URL';"
  • Introduced the 'fallback' option: (default = 0) use PAR { file => 'foo.par', fallback => 1 }; ==> Loads modules from the PAR file only if loading

    them from @INC did not succeed.

  • Introduced the 'run' option which executes a script in a PAR archive just like perl -MPAR foo.par script.pl
  • If PAR::Repository::Client is installed, you can add a repository of .par distributions to your library search path as follows: use PAR { repository => 'http://foo' };
  • Of course, 'run' also works with repositories: use PAR { repository => 'http://foo', run => 'my_app' }; (This searches the repository for any distributions that have a my_app script.) --> For details on repositories, have a look at the

    PAR::Repository::Client module.

    • Bug fixes, etc.
  • Commented a couple of the routines in PAR.pm. (Yay!)
  • New test script for the new fallback loading feature.
  • Fixed a bug in the Spreadsheet::ParseExcel handling in PatchContent.pm.

[Changes for 0.942 - Jul 22, 2006]

• Bug fixes, etc.
  • Better support for diagnostics.pm (in conjunction with Module::ScanDeps 0.62.)
  • Now requiring Module::ScanDeps 0.62.

[Changes for 0.941 - Jun 20, 2006]
(No, PAR isn't stagnating. It's just that 1.00 would draw close if we continued with 0.01 increases.)

• Bug fixes, etc.
  • Version 0.94 of PAR would use the same cache area for all pp-ed applications due to a faulty hotfix for Digest::SHA. This applies to PAR 0.94 only. Think of 0.941 being PAR 0.94 done right.

[Changes for 0.94 - Jun 1, 2006]

• New Features
  • Added support for reading options to pp from a file using a '@filename' argument to pp: pp -o foo --gui @filename foo.pl
• Bug fixes, etc.
  • Workaround for a bug in Digest::SHA 5.38 and 5.39 that would prevent PAR from being built.
  • Fixed details in the 2-pp.t test file.
  • Now recognizes text files that aren't picked up by the -T operator but by the "file" tool.
  • Applied Roderich Schupp's patch to 30-current_exec.t to fix a path issue.
  • Now requiring Module::ScanDeps 0.60 which fixes a couple of bugs which might be observed as PAR bugs.
  • Now working well with Spreadsheet::ParseExcel which uses an invalid POD section to comment out a code block. This wasn't recognized by PAR::Filter::PodStrip as POD and hence partly left in...
  • If the output directory doesn't exist, we create it now and output a meaningful error message if that failed.

[Changes for 0.93 - May 19, 2006]

• New Features
  • Added support for PAR_TMPDIR (PAR_GLOBAL_TMPDIR) so that the temp directory can be controlled for just the PAR file bits. (Leolo)
  • Added par_current_exec_proc() which finds the file of the current executable in /proc, if possible. (Leolo)
  • Added par_current_exec() which finds he file of the current executable, if possible on this OS. (Leolo)
  • par_findprog() now uses par_current_exec() if possible.
• Bug Fixes, etc.
  • Upgraded to Module::Install 0.62+ (Audrey Tang, Steffen Mueller)
  • Document a strange interaction with chdir() and relative paths. (Chris Dolan)
  • Documented the bits that make up PAR_TEMP. (Leolo)
  • Fixed the call to par_findprog. path (aka val) was set to tmpdir. (Leolo)
  • Documented the CACHE name at the end of a self-executing PAR. (Leolo)
  • myldr/Makefile.PL now generates some dependencies for main.c (Leolo)
  • Applied patch from RT ticket. (tsee) https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=13959
  • Applied Ivan Kudryavtsev's patch that fixes a couple of calls to PAR subroutines in PatchContent filtered code. (tsee)

[Changes for 0.92 - February 22, 2006]

• Bug Fixes
  • Now requiring Module::ScanDeps 0.56 which handles autouse correctly.
  • Now shipping with a correct SIGNATURE. (Which was broken for 0.91.)

[Changes for 0.91 - February 13, 2006]

• Bug Fixes
  • Applied Alan Stewart's patch which fixes @ARGV pollution in daughter programs. See also http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.par/2152
  • Now mentioning the ENV var "PAR_VERBATIM" in the documentation. See also http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.par/2196
  • Applied Malcolm Nooning's fix for the test suite. We used to get failed tests on Windows because of spaces in path names.
  • Applied Roderich Schupp's and Malcolm Nooning's patches to the test suite fixing problems with Cygwin.
  • Applied Vincent Ladeuil's patch to PAR::Filter::Bleach to return a true value for modules that loaded okay.
  • Changed 'PAR_BASE' in the Makefile.PL to 'SMUELLER'.

[Changes for 0.90 - November 25, 2005]

• Bug Fixes
  • When compiling with static libperl, myldr/ may fail "make" due to sha1.c not generated properly.
  • Pod stripping could fail on __DATA__ sections for files with CRLF line endings.
  • The documentation erroneously referred to the PAR_TEMP environment variable, whereas it should be PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP.
  • Compilation fixes for MinGW/MSYS.

[Changes for 0.89 - June 10, 2005]

• Bug Fixes
  • Stop static.c from pulling in Perl header files, otherwise parl.exe ends up depending on the Perl DLL on Win32 when Perl is built without PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS.
  • With *nix and File::Path 1.06, par.pl's avoidance of loading Cwd.pm caused syntax errors.

[Changes for 0.88 - June 7, 2005]

• Bug Fixes
  • Extracted .pl files should be loadable via the coderef-in-@INC too, just like .pm files and autosplit files. This makes PAR work with Perl 5.8.7 on Win32.
  • Fix the build with GCC 4.0.
  • If $ENV{PWD} is not defined, fallback to use `pwd` to obtain the working directory for invoking.

[Changes for 0.87 - January 31, 2005]

• Bug Fixes
  • On Win32, some versions of File::Spec::Win32 contains explicit "use Cwd;" lines, which renders parl.exe unusable.
  • Executable made by "pp" may fail when invoked as "./a.out" or "../a.out", due to incorrect PWD handling logic.

[Changes for 0.86 - December 11, 2004]

• New Features
  • New "pp -z" (--compress) option to set compression level (0-9).
  • New "pp -T" (--tempcache) option to override the per-executable directory name; it defaults to a hash of the executable, computed at compile time. This makes startup much faster for large executables.
  • The hash algorithm described above now prefers Digest::SHA if installed, otherwise Digest::SHA1, then fallbacks to Digest::MD5.
  • Functionality of "pp -X" is now extended: if the argument after -X is a zip or par file, files in it are excluded from the produced executable, and the executable will "use" the zip/par instead. For multiple -X args, successive args are only "use"d if they contain additional unique files.
  • "pp -l" now searches for libraries in "." and PATH in Win32.
  • "pp -l" shared libraries are now added to %skip, so it will not be included in both shlib/ and lib/.
  • "pp -l" now chases symbolic links. For example, if "libsomelib.so" is a symlink to "libsomelib.so.1", which is another symlink to "libsomelib.so.1.2", pp now follows these symlinks and add the real file the par, rather than "libsomelib.so".
  • New contributed code in "contrib/stdio/": Useful Tk console for "pp -g" users.
  • New contributed tutorial documents, currently in "contrib/docs/", which will eventually be turned into POD documents.
  • Running "perl Makefile.PL" with $ENV{DEBUG} set to true now produces "parl" with debug symbols.
  • Remove Cwd.pm (and Cwd.so) from the bundled dependencies.
• Bug Fixes
  • More robust probing for case-insensitive file systems.
  • PodStrip now attempts to match "standard" pod start before =cut, otherwise =cut gets removed by itself.
  • Win32 slashes are now normalized in privlib and archlib directories.
  • Don't extract shared libraries to inc/, since they were extracted in $PAR_TEMP already.
  • Don't re-extract shared libraries in subdirectories, since they are picked up by corresponding "use".
  • Tk now exits properly with a non-zero exit() value.
  • Fix libperl probing problem on Debian and Gentoo that manifests as a "libperl5.8.so not found" error during runtime.
  • gpp: Fixed typo in options with multiple filenames; cleaned up pp parameters.
  • When PAR_TEMP is set, shlib/ was not correctly added to the dynamic load path environment variables.
  • PAR now builds with Win32 VC++ without CVTRES.EXE available.
  • Detection of cl.exe, gcc.exe and cc.exe is now case-insensitive.

[Changes for 0.85 - July 2, 2004]

• New Features
  • New version of "gpp"; see contrib/gui_pp/gpp_readme.txt for details.
• Bug Fixes
  • MANIFEST and META.yml were not properly updated by PAR::Packer.
  • Setting directory aliases with "pp -a"/"pp -A" was broken. Fixed, and tests were added for it.
  • Statically-built executables was needlessly extracting libperl each time it runs; now it is eliminated and hence much faster.

[Changes for 0.83 - May 29, 2004]

• New Features
  • Revamped PAR::FAQ and sychronized with par.perl.org.
  • In pp-generated programs, $0 is now set to the pathname leading to the invoked executable. Use $ENV{PAR_0} instead to get the filename that contains the main perl program.
  • Updated "contrib/gui_pp/gpp" to support PAR::Packer options.
• Bug Fixes
  • Core XS modules, such as Data::Dumper, were skipped by "pp".
  • Fix t/2-pp.t for Cygwin by probing $Config{_exe} rather than uname().
  • Scripts made by "pp -P", when invoked as "perl scriptname", should not search for the same-named programs in PATH.
  • Correctly remove leading slash and drive letters from absolute filenames passed to "pp -a". Also normalized blackslahes to slashes.
  • The PP_OPTS environment variable was not recognized.
  • "pp -a dirname;diralias" was broken.
  • "pp -f" and "pp -F" were broken.

[Changes for 0.82 - May 24, 2004]

• New Features
  • New module PAR::Packer provides an OO interface to "pp"'s functionality; "pp" is now merely a thin wrapper for it.
  • New module App::Packer::PAR is a modified version of App::Packer, designed to work with PAR::Packer, and will hopefully be merged back to App::Packer.
  • The old, procedural "pp" is moved to contrib/; end-users should notice no changes in "pp"'s behaviour.
  • New options "pp -a" and "pp -A" (--addfile/--addlist) provides ways to include extra files and directories in the package.
  • The long option name for "pp -M" is changed from --add to --module. The old name is still recognized but no longer documented. Using "pp -M" to include non-library files is now deprecated; use "pp -a" instead.
  • par.pl and parl now writes messages to STDOUT, instead of STDERR. As a consequence, t/2-pp.t no longer prints extra warnings during "make test".
• Bug Fixes
  • On Non-Win32 platforms, perl 5.8.0 and earlier versions produced pp-generated executables that immediately segfaults.
  • Running pp-generated executables with absolute pathname failed on statically-built perls.
  • Tests were failing due to a missing pipeacommand.pm in MANIFEST.
  • Add the missing myldr/win32.coff for building on Cygwin/MinGW.
  • If the "perl" in path is different from the perl interpreter used for "make test", t/2-pp.t is known to fail and is now skipped.
  • Cygwin failed t/2-pp.t because "parl" is spelled as "parl.exe" there.

[Changes for 0.81 - May 23, 2004]

• New Features
  • Regained support for Win9x, Cygwin and MinGW.
  • PAR now supports 64-bit platforms, such as Tru64 and AIX.
  • Cygwin and MinGW can now build EXEs with icons, too; MinGW can update the icons, but Cygwin cannot.
  • Newly supported modules: Pod::Usage, DBIx::SearchBuilder, DBIx::ReportBuilder, SVK::Command, SVN::Core, and the ':encoding()' IO discipline.
• Bug Fixes
  • On non-Win32 systems, invoking pp-generated executable from PATH did not work.
  • Standalone executables were clobbered by existing perl environments with an identical "auto/IO" libpath as the author's environment.
  • Standalone executables did not work on systems with an unset dynamic load path environment variable (eg. LD_LIBRARY_PATH).
  • "pp -p -o multi.par 1.pl 2.pl; parl multi.par 1.pl" now works.
  • $ENV{PATH} and $ENV{TEMP} were truncated at first path delimiter.
  • "pp -f Bleach" did not work for ActivePerl on Win32.
  • Windows 9x systems were generating invalid cache directory names.
  • $ENV{path} is also recognized as $ENV{PATH} for Win32.

[Changes for 0.80 - March 17, 2004]

• New Features
  • A comprehensive test suite for pp in contrib/automated_pp_test/. It is run as part of the "make test" process from t/2-pp.t.
  • Much better support for "pp -i" and "pp -N" (--icon/--info) using the Win32::Exe module. You may now use EXE and DLL as icon files.
  • If PAR_GLOBAL_CLEAN (-C, --clean) is not set, we now preemptively extracts files under the cache directory. That made POSIX.pm and other modules that depends on %INC pointing to real files work correctly.
  • Now uses SHA-1 to create temporary directories and files, instead of mtime.
  • Verbosity level is now 1..3, not 0..5; "pp -v" now takes an optional integer, so "pp -v input.pl" is no longer an error.
  • New flags "-vv" and "-vvv", as shorthands for "-v 2" and "-v 3".
  • The user-settable PAR_CLEAN and PAR_TEMP environment variables has been renamed to PAR_GLOBAL_CLEAN and PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP; the original variables are still accessible within the program. This is so that a pp-generated program can exec() or system() another one without crippling its environment variables.
  • File lookups are now case-insensitive on case-insensitive filesystems.
  • Another Tk-based GUI in contrib/gui_pp/; not installed by default.
  • OOified "pp" in contrib/object_oriented_pp/; not installed by default.
• Bug Fixes
  • "pp -d" (--dependent) prevented "pp -C" (--clean) from working.
  • The "pp -m" (--multiarch) option was implemented incorrectly and thus broken.
  • Many documentation tweaks.
  • Previously, "pp -M" (--module) did not add the module itself, only its dependencies.
  • Suppress a bogus warning when $ENV{$Config{ldlibpthname}} is empty.
  • "parl -v" without Module::Signature installed could delete all files within the current directory. Oops.
  • On *nix systems, pp-generated executables erroneously linked to libperl even if "pp -d" (--dependent) is not set.
  • Spurious =cut directives in source files is now handled gracefully by PAR::Filter::PodStrip.
  • "pp -L" (--log) now logs all output messages to the log file, not just the ones printed by "pp" itself.

[Changes for 0.79 - January 8, 2004]

• Bug Fixes
  • Setting PAR_CLEAN had the reversed effect. Oops.
  • Dynamic libraries in cached directories was not detected properly, resulting in "permission denied" errors during certain race conditions.

[Changes for 0.78 - January 7, 2004]

• New Features
  • By default, executables generated by "pp" will now store extracted files in cache directories. You may override this by setting the PAR_CLEAN environment variable to "1", or generate executables using "pp -C".
  • New "pp -C" (--clean) option to make the generated executable clean up temporary directories after each run.
  • PAR_CLEARTEMP is renamed to PAR_CLEAN.
• Bug Fixes
  • On Win32, temporary directories containing shared libraries was not being properly cleaned up.
  • If no suitable temporary directories are found, use the current directory (".") instead of the root directory ("/").

[Changes for 0.77 - January 1, 2004]

• New Features
  • New "pp -c" and "pp -x" (--compile/--execute) options run the script with "perl -c" to check for dependencies.
  • Also, the new "pp -n" (--noscan) command skips the default static scanning altogether.
  • Added support for "pp -c/-x/-n" to tkpp.
  • For dynamically-built perls, pp-generated .exe files will now appear in the process table with the same name as it was launched, instead of "par.exe".
  • New filter "Obfuscate", which uses B::Deobfuscate to strip away PODs and comments, as well as mangling variable names.
  • Merged tkpp 1.1 from Doug Gruber.
  • OS/2 is now supported.
  • External Zlib is no longer required to run pp-generated binaries.
• Bug Fixes
  • Makefile.PL was failing if $Config{cc} contains spaces.
  • No longer needs setting "Windows 95 compatible mode" to run on WinXP.
  • On Win9x with Perl 5.6.1, "nmake" was failing due to extra "@[...]" symbols in Makefile. It should be fixed now.
  • The "bad signature" problem with newer Archive::Zip versions is fixed.
  • App::Packer::Backend::PAR was misplaced into App/Packer/PAR.
  • Signature tests were failing under new ExtUtils::MakeMaker versions.
  • ActiveState's PPM building machine was having problem with PAR; a ".pdb" entry in MANIFEST.SKIP is added to fix that.
  • Some self-built PAR instances on Windows were failing due to mismatching short and long pathnames.

[Changes for 0.76 - October 28, 2003]

• New Features
  • Input filters. "pp --filter Bleach" now obfuscates the incoming script with PAR::Filter::Bleach; "pp --modfilter Bleach" applies Bleach to all packed modules.
  • Two previously built-in filters, PodStrip and PatchContent, are refactored out as PAR::Filter subclasses.
  • Two new filters, Bleach and Bytecode, are added for source-hiding purporses.
  • New utility, "tkpp", provides a GUI frontend to "pp".
  • New option, "pp --perlscript", to generate stand-alone scripts.
  • The old "PAR::Intro" documentation has been replaced by two new ones: "PAR::Tutorial" and "PAR::FAQ".
  • Tk pixmap (.xpm) files can now be packed with "pp --add".
• Bug Fixes
  • Perl 5.8.1 has an off-by-one bug that prevents "parl" to function properly. We have now provided a workaround; this bug should also be fixed in Perl 5.8.2.
  • Fixed https support for LWP via the new Module::ScapDeps.

[Changes for 0.75 - September 21, 2003]

• New Features
  • "pp -o file.exe file.par" now packs file.par into file.exe; this means you can hand-tweak PAR files generated by "pp -p" before packing it into an executable.
• Bug Fixes
  • Packing multiple programs by "pp script1.pl script2.pl" was producing syntax errors; fixed.
  • "pp -M datafile" now works.
  • Exit code from pp-packed executables now properly propagates out.
  • Fixed "use base" detection, Math::BigInt support and spurious signature warnings, by updated versions of Module::ScapDeps and Module::Signature.
  • On Win32, the PE info headers no longer show PAR_XXXXXXXXXXX.

[Changes for 0.74 - August 20, 2003]

• New Features
  • pp now has a set of "PatchContent" rules, dealing with non-PAR-compatible modules: Tk, Tk::Widget, Win32::API::Type, Win32::SystemInfo, SQL::Parser, diagnostics. These rules may get refactored back to PAR.pm in the future.
  • New function, PAR::reload_libs(), to reload currently used libraries inside PAR files.
  • PAR.pm itself is now never packed into pp-generated files, to perserve interface compatibility and reduce bloat.
  • PAR.pm now handles "use PAR 'othercode.par'" called from program or modules inside PAR files, even recursively.
  • A new icon for Win32 that is hopefully prettier.
• Bug Fixes
  • All data after __DATA__ are preserved for included libraries. This helps self-reading modules like Net::LDAP::Constants.
  • PAR::read_file() was broken. It now works.
  • "use PAR" inside pp-generated executables was failing with 'file too short' errors due the mishandling of seek/tell.
  • Occasional crashes on Win32 due to rmdir() called too early with DLLs still open is fixed; however, "pp -d" executables may still exhibit this problem.
  • "pp -X" used to only take full pathnames as arguments. It now also takes "Module::Name" and "Module/Name.pm".
  • Dynamically built Perl under Cygwin failed to build, because libperl.dll.a was not found.
  • Eliminated "callback called on exit" warnings, and the related "access violation" error on Win32.

[Changes for 0.73 - August 6, 2003]

• New Features
  • The PAR Homepage is now online at http://par.perl.org/. Documentations have been changed to link to it.
• Bug Fixes
  • Tk applications can now properly access xpm/xbm files with Tk->findINC.
  • On Win32, pp-generated executables could not start from Explorer, if its path contains space characters. Fixed.
  • On Win32, pp-generated executables used to leave around an empty directory in $ENV{TEMP}. It is now properly rmdir'ed.
  • Some systems (notably OpenBSD and Debian) does not put their libperl.so in the default location, which breaks the build process; now searches inside $ENV{$Config{ldlibpthname}} and $Config{libpth} to find it.

[Changes for 0.72 - August 2, 2003]

• New Features
  • CHECK and INIT blocks in programs inside PAR are now supported.
• Bug Fixes
  • Two debug statements were mistakenly left in the source, resulting in "trying to get rid of /tmp/par_priv.xxxx.tmp" messages.
  • Building on Linux with GCC 3.2.2 was failing due to massive heap required for my_perl.c. Fixed by splitting it into 3k chunks.
  • Depends on Module::ScanDeps 0.21; it supports utf8 on Perl 5.6.1 and can significantly reduce executable file size by eliminating unneccessary shared libraries.

[Changes for 0.71 - July 30, 2003]

• Bug Fixes
  • A nasty data-loss bug has been uncovered immediately after the previous release; it only affects Windows platforms, and may cause all files to be erased under the current root (\) directory.
  • Building on Red Hat linux was failing, with error message that says "my_perl not declared". This has since been fixed.

[Changes for 0.70 - July 29, 2003]

• New Features
  • On machines with shared libperl, "pp" now makes truly stand-alone executables; the old behaviour is available with "pp --dependent".
  • Under Windows NT/2000/XP, "pp --icon=name.ico" now changes the icon for the generated executable; otherwise, a default "white camel" icon is used.
  • "use PAR 'http://example.com/foo.par'" now works, as does "perl -MPAR -Ihttp://example.com/foo.par".
  • PAR::Dist is now a mandatory prerequisite, which provides functions to turn any CPAN distribution into a PAR distribution, as well as to install, uninstall, sign and verify such files.
  • Integrated PAR::Dist into "par.pl" and "parl". For example, "parl -i Foo-0.01-i386-freebsd-5.8.0.par" installs a PAR distribution; "parl -v out.exe" verifies a digitally signed executable generated by "pp --sign".
  • A new option, "pp --multiarch", lets you generate PAR files that can work on several architectures.
  • "pp --sign" now adds digital signatures to generated executables and PAR files.
  • PAR files may now (recursively) contain other PAR files inside their par/ directories.
  • shlib/ and par/ directories inside PAR files can now contain architecture- and perl-version-specific subdirectories.
  • The "Cross-Platform Packaging and Deployment with PAR" tutorial is now online as http://www.autrijus.org/par-tutorial/.
• Bug Fixes
  • MANIFEST.SKIP was broken on Win32.
  • C compilers that doesn't handle long line well can now compile PAR.
  • DLL files inside the same auto/ library as XS modules was not properly extracted and loaded. This specifically affects Win32.
  • Because parl's @INC is '.', pp-generated executables may miss IO.dll and other shared libraries since they couldn't be correctly found in @INC.

[Changes for 0.69 - May 31, 2003]

• New Features
  • Under Perl 5.8, "pp -p" now works with Apache::PAR. See http://aut.dyndns.org/par-tutorial/slide018.html for a simple example.
  • "pp -M filename" now adds "filename" to /, not /lib/, unless filename ends in (pm|ix|al). This makes it possible to bundle "web.conf" needed by Apache::PAR.
  • "pp -l" now searchs in system library paths, and appends "lib" / prepends ".$dl_ext" where necessary.
• Bug Fixes
  • PAR segfaults on some Unix platforms due to a NULL pointer used in mktmpdir.c. Fixed.
  • "pp -o out.par -p -e '...'" now honors -o; previously it used "a.out.par" anyway.
  • Inhibited spurious uninitialized warnings under -w in the POD-stripping code.
  • Win32 did not properly cleans up PAR_TEMP directory, resulting in failure for executables that reused the same PID. Fixed.

[Changes for 0.68 - May 26, 2003]

• New Features
  • New 'pp -l' option to pack additional shared libraries (DLLs).
  • POD-stripped libraries inside PAR files now have #line directives inserted, so they report the original line numbers on failure.
  • PAR files generated by 'pp' now has a MANIFEST file that can be viewed by Gecko-based browsers with Javascript turned on, e.g.: jar:http://aut.dyndns.org/par/test.par!/MANIFEST
• Bug Fixes
  • Each pp-executable instance now creates its own PAR_TEMP directory; this avoids permission errors when multiple users run the same binary. As a consequence, PAR_CLEARTEMP is now set to "1" by default.
  • Newer versions of shared Zlib library no longer causes "pp" to generate broken executables.
  • Fixed dynamic loading on Cygwin was failing due to missing +x mode.
  • Like "use lib", "use PAR 'name.par'" now unshift()s instead of push()es into @INC. Same applies for "par.pl -A" and "parl -A".
  • Fixed building on ActivePerl 626 and below due to a missing $Config{ld}.

[Changes for 0.67 - April 1, 2003]

• New Features
  • PAR now works on Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS.
  • Globbing support in PAR::import(): use PAR "/path/*.pm";
  • New license clarification messages added to POD and 'pp -V'.
  • All 'pp' options now has a short form (-o) and a long form (--output).
  • Revamped documentation for 'pp'.
  • New -g (--gui) flag for 'pp' to build console-less Win32 executables.
• Bug Fixes
  • Building on Darwin Perl 5.6.0 was broken with 'cc -s'.
  • Building on 5.6.0 was broken due to bad 'base.pm'.
  • Win32 Tk::Widget autoloading was broken due to a binmode() bug.
  • IPC::Run was pod-stripped incorrectly. Fixed.
  • Depends on Module::ScanDeps 0.19, which supports utf8 and .ph files.
  • Better AutoInstall support, which uses 'sudo' where necessary.

[Changes for 0.66 - March 20, 2003]

• New Features
  • Adds PAR::Intro, a PODified version of the online presentation.
  • Adds App::Packer::Backend::PAR, a bridge between PAR and App::Packer.
  • Scripts and modules are now searched in "/" last, instead of first.
  • Experimental patch for packing shared libraries via "pp -l".
  • HTTP fetching of precompiled packages in addition to FTP.
• Bug Fixes
  • Makefile.PL now downloads precompiled packages only if needed.
  • AutoInstall has been made to work for an easier installation.
  • The redundant "parl.exe.bat" is no longer created on Win32.
  • Pre-0.63 PARs used to leave broken .dll in TEMP; now they're cleaned.
  • "pp c:\something.pl" no longer treats c: as a relative path.
  • "pp -I dir" now searches 'dir' first, instead of last.
  • "pp" was broken on Perl 5.6.0 due to => stringification bugs.
  • Support for Tk::Widget autoloading has been added.
  • "parl" was not stripped if "gcc" was invoked as "cc"; fixed.
  • On a machine with multiple "parl"s, "pp" now uses the correct one.
  • File::Temp was missing as a dependency.
• Known Issues
  • Cygwin support is still broken.
  • PAR does not include utf8_heavy.pl nor unicore/* for scripts that has "use utf8;". This has since been fixed by Module::ScanDeps 0.18.

[Changes for 0.65 - March 9, 2003]

This release comes with several significant improvements:

• Automatic binary installation

Previously, users without a C compiler cannot build the 'parl' executable, and is therefore unable to create self-contained binaries using 'pp'.

Now, if there is a binary package available for that architecture under my CPAN directory, the Makefile.PL script will automatically fetch it, unpack into blib/, and the installation will continue as normal, resulting in a fully-functional 'pp'.

This feature is part of the soon-to-be-released Module::Install framework; it will greatly benefit all CPAN authors with non-pure-perl distributions.

• POD stripping

Packages generated with 'pp' will now strip POD sections from all packed dependencies (your own scripts is unaffected); all binary executables will save at least 276732 bytes, with additional ~20% saving in additional packed dependencies.

You can turn off this feature with the PAR_VERBATIM environment variable.

• XS Incompatibility solved

Because 'pp'-generated executables includes some fixed version of shared libraries (IO, Zlib, etc), they used to break when the target system has different version of shared libraries.

Now PAR::Heavy intercepts DynaLoader::dl_expandspec to always prefer the library inside the PAR file, so this issue is resolved.

• 5.6.1 Reclaimed

Thanks to Sisyphus and various others, building on Perl 5.6.1 (with its old ExtUtils::MakeMaker and lack of PTHREAD_ATFORK) now works again.

[Changes for 0.64 - March 2, 2003]

• New Features
  • The t/0-signature.t test is re-enabled for people using my Module::Signature to verify the module's OpenPGP signature.
  • This release is the first distribution on CPAN to use the Module::Install framework, which is a stand-alone, extensible drop-in replacement for ExtUtils::MakeMaker that needs no extra action/prerequisites for end users.
• Bug Fixes
  • Dynamic loading on Win32 was broken, due to a binmode() bug reported by Bill Atkins, D. Menzel and others.
  • Building on Win32 in directory names that contain spaces did not work.

[Changes for 0.63 - February 6, 2003]

• Bug Fixes
  • The 'parl' binary (which replaces the old 'par' or 'par.exe') didn't work properly when bundling perl modules for selfcontained executables, rendering 'pp' useless on machines without core perl.