The latest dev-perl/XML-Simple-2.0.7 includes dev-perl/XML-SAX as a dependency. XML-SAX doesn't seem to play very nicely with perl 5.6.1. In particular gnupod no longer works, but this probably applies to other applications using XML as well: palmer /# gnupod_list.pl Only ASCII encoding allowed without perl 5.7.2 or higher. You tried: ISO-8859-1 XML-SAX support is actually optional for XML-Simple, so one solution is to remove this dependency if perl<5.8 is installed (I'm not quite sure how to do this in portage?). Another option would be to make XML-SAX only depend on perl>=5.8 (maybe remove it from the default-1.0 profile?). I don't know if either of these is acceptable, but for my own personal use, I have manually unmerged XML-SAX, and XML-Simple seems to work fine. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. palmer / # emerge info Portage 2.0.48-r1 (default-1.0, gcc-2.95.3, glibc-2.2.5-r8) ============================================================== === System uname: 2.4.21 i686 Transmeta(tm) Crusoe(tm) Processor TM5800 GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linu x/distributions/gentoo" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/share/config /usr/kde/2/share/confi g /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/co nfig/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" USE="x86 apm avi crypt cups encode libg++ mmx mpeg ncurses pdflib quicktime spel l truetype xml2 xmms xv berkdb esd gdbm gif gnome-libs gpm gtk imlib java libwww motif oggvorbis pam python readline sdl snmp ssl svga tcpd -3dnow alsa apache2 -arts bonobo cdr curses dga dvd emacs ethereal evo fbcon gnome gtk2 gtkhtml guil e jpeg -kde lcms -lirc -mikmod mysql nas -nls odbc -opengl oss pcmcia pda perl p ic plotutils png pnp -qt -qtmt samba -slang smooth tcltk tetex tiff trusted usb vim-with-x xml X zlib" COMPILER="" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-mcpu=i686 -march=i686 -O3 -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=i686 -march=i686 -O3 -pipe" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" MAKEOPTS="-j2" AUTOCLEAN="yes" SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" FEATURES="ccache digest sandbox strict"
Actually, perl 5.8 is marked as stable for all architectures, all profiles now. We can no longer continue to support the 5.6.1 installations. Does this problem still affect you with perl 5.8?
I had forgotten about this bug :-) No, the problem doesn't exist with perl 5.8, so feel free to close this.
Resolved when 5.8 became the default