A concern was raised at the perl5-porters list and I thought best
to repeat it also at perl-release-announce.
(Which means perl5-porters will get it twice, oh well...)

The purpose of the perl-release-announce is to keep both operating
system vendors/projects and Perl aware of each others' latest developments,
so that by the time when Real Releases roll out, there will be no Surprises.

It's all symbiotic: the OS suppliers test, report, and fix;
and the perl5-porters help, integrate, and fix.

The Reminder follows.

The OS suppliers MUST NOT supply Perl releases known as MAINT_TRIALs
and devel to their customers, never ever.

MAINT_TRIALs and devels are definitely unfinished and potentially
unstable developer-only releases (and in the case of devel,
potentially backwardly incompatible).  You will just gain a horde of
unhappy customers and a bunch of not amused Perl developers.
Instead, help with the MAINT_TRIALs by testing them so that true MAINTs
can be released.

To avoid accidents like this, please study Porting/pumpkin.pod and
Porting/patching.pod.  (They are beneficial reads in general, how
to work with the Perl source and how to supply patches to perlbug@perl.com.)

(What releases then to release, press onto CDs and whatnot, you may be
 wondering?  MAINT releases, I'd say--call me superstitious but I
 think dot-zero releases should be avoided.)

-- 
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen