Re: [pcre-dev] Question about PCRE 8.31 version and bug fixe…

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Jeannie Cain
CC: pcre-dev
Subject: Re: [pcre-dev] Question about PCRE 8.31 version and bug fixes only
PCRE2 (the 10.xx series) was released at the start of 2015. At that time,
the feature set of PCRE1 (the 8.xx) series was frozen. However, we
continued to fix bugs in PCRE1 for some years because we know that it takes
time for programs to be updated to the new API. (When I say "we" I mean "I"
for the compiling and interpreting code, and the JIT maintainer for the JIT
features, with help and contributions from PCRE users.) The most recent
release of PCRE1 is 8.44, February 2020. Five years had passed since the
release of PCRE2 and I had lost familiarity with the PCRE1 code, so I
thought it was time to call a halt to PCRE1 after that release. I have to
say that, another year having passed, there would have to be some totally
catastrophic issue for me even to consider looking at the PCRE1 code again
now.

In the meantime, development has continued with PCRE2, as well as a lot of
code refactoring, manual and automatic testing, and auditing. It is now a
much better piece of software than PCRE1. We encourage all developers to
move to PCRE2 if they can.

Philip


On Wed, 31 Mar 2021 at 11:38, Jeannie Cain via Pcre-dev <pcre-dev@???>
wrote:

> Hello -
> Can you please tell me exactly what this means? Is there any current
> ongoing support or simply "fixing" as someone flags an issue?
>
> Note that the PCRE 8.xx series (PCRE1) is now in a bugfix-only state. All
> development is happening in the PCRE2 10.xx series.
>
> --
> *JEANNIE CAIN*
> Senior IT Security Manager
> *mobile* +1-512-806-8227
> *email* jeannie.cain@???
> <https://sparkpo.st/dnmva>
> --
> ## List details at https://lists.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/pcre-dev
>