Perl, CGI, mod_perl

Lately I've been dealing with quite a few software support issues that have boiled down to incompatibilities when running Perl 5.004. Not a problem, as we have 5.004 compatible scripts on hand that we give out. But I'm wondering why so many hosts, particularly large ones like Eart*****, still seem to use this older version of Perl?

Perl.com has on their download page at the moment "For the faint of heart, the previous version of Perl is the 5.005_03 release. Timid souls who are afraid to upgrade to the current release might want this". Now that's 5.005. They used to have something about 5.004 that it had numerous security holes and that the only reason it was still distributed was for compatibility with older programs (or something along those lines, it's only a vague recollection of mine).

So is there any reason it's still being used? Is it packaged with a particular OS distribution, and many hosts just stick to it? Are there popular scripts around that will only run on 5.004?

In a similar vein, although I suppose the answer here is obvious, how many hosts run mod_perl, and if not why not? I presume the answer is that not all scripts run under mod_perl, so most hosts don't support it. Is it possible to set up Apache to use mod_perl AND also run Perl scripts as CGI (with some sort of option for users)? If anyone knows the answer to that one for PHP (mod_php and CGI), then I'm thinking the same should apply to Perl.

 

 

 

 

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