[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 pipe_a_command.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 self-
      contained executables, rendering 'pp' useless on machines
      without core perl.

