* The build procedure for perl/ part has been greatly simplified by
weaning ourselves off of MakeMaker.
+ * Perl 5.8 or greater has been required since Git 1.7.4 released in
+ 2010, but we continued to assume some core modules may not exist and
+ used a conditional "eval { require <<module>> }"; we no longer do
+ this. Some platforms (Fedora/RedHat/CentOS, for example) ship Perl
+ without all core modules by default (e.g. Digest::MD5, File::Temp,
+ File::Spec, Net::Domain, Net::SMTP). Users on such platforms may
+ need to install these additional modules.
+
+ * As a convenience, we install copies of Perl modules we require which
+ are not part of the core Perl distribution (e.g. Error and
+ Mail::Address). Users and packagers whose operating system provides
+ these modules can set NO_PERL_CPAN_FALLBACKS to avoid installing the
+ bundled modules.
+
* In preparation for implementing narrow/partial clone, the machinery
for checking object connectivity used by gc and fsck has been
taught that a missing object is OK when it is referenced by a