About this distro
-----------------

This collection of scripts and modules provides access to the APC (All
Perl Changes) archive:

Scripts
-------

patchaperlup                 a low level script that only builds
                             new perl sources from old perl
                             sources by applying numerically
                             sorted patchfiles.

buildaperl                   a wrapper around patchaperlup that
                             is able to compile and install a new
                             perl into its own cache area.

binsearchaperl               a wrapper around buildaperl that is
                             able to run already built perls from the
                             cache area as well as build new perls via
                             buildaperl and compare their
                             functionality. If there is a different
                             behaviour between two perls, the script
                             is able to determine the exact patch
                             number that caused the change.

perlpatch2svn                *** DEPRECATED ***
                             parse a stream of patches from the
                             APC and feed them into a Subversion
                             repository. Pedantically reconstruct
                             as much as possible from the
                             Perforce repository, binary files
                             that are missing in the APC are
                             restored from a dump.

apc2svn                      *** DEPRECATED ***
                             a wrapper around perlpatch2svn which
                             has a concept how a future
                             subversion repository might look
                             like. It is able to import the whole
                             APC into an empty or prepopulated
                             repository. Incremental updates from
                             APC into this repository supported.
                             **Use with caution**, the repository
                             layout itself is still subject to
                             change.


Modules
-------

Perl::Repository::APC        provides methods to get at the
                             important metadata of the
                             APC--branches, perl versions and
                             patches.

Perl::Repository::APC2SVN    *** DEPRECATED ***
                             a collection of utility functions
                             for the scripts that deal with
                             importing the APC into a Subversion
                             repository.

Perl::Repository::APC::BAP   Heuristics to understand arguments
                             5.6.0@5666, 5.7.3@, @17000, etc. as
                             short names for patched perl
                             versions. Only used by buildaperl.


Copyright
---------

Code and data are copyright (C) 2002,2003,2005,2006 Andreas Koenig and
Rafael Garcia-Suarez. They can be used, modified, and redistributed
under the same terms as Perl itself.
