The Perl Toolchain Summit 2026: Security, Testing, Porting and Community Collaboration

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From April 23-26, 2026, the invite-only Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS) brought together about 30 of the ecosystem's most active maintainers including four first-timers in Vienna, Austria for four days of uninterrupted deep-dive collaboration in pair-programming sessions, consensus discussions, and critical infrastructure work. Attendees tackled security tooling and infrastructure, modernization and redesign proposals, several CI and test harness improvements, Perl core optimizations, and metadata/spec updates.Thanks to all the sponsors’ support (financial, in-kind, and community), this year’s Summit was a success. It produced multiple module releases, consensus on future smoke-testing and CPAN Testers architecture, and a new CPANSec advisory feed that will allow developers to quickly assess any Perl project’s security using either CLI tools or the MetaCPAN website itself. Those advancements benefit all organizations relying on Perl directly or indirectly.

PTS 2026 Key Results & Deliverables

Security

• Vulnerability triage;
• CNA improvements;
• Meta V3 is moving forward;
• Deprecated Module::Signature, considered “security theater”.

Testing and Quality Assurance

• On the road to Devel::Cover 2.00;
• Several improvements made to Test::Smoke, with 3 releases: removal of dual PerlIO/stdio testing, making install more robust (and portable);
• Test::Smoke backend full rewrite to ensure sustainability with new features and better performance;
• The Test2 family of modules, including the new web user interface, was greatly improved, with many issues fixed and new features implemented;
• Syncing from backpan.perl.org to fill in CPAN Testers’ backpan;
• New MCP server mcp.cpantesters.org to browse CPAN Testers reports from your preferred LLM CLI.

Supply Chain and Other Modules

• Release of cpm v1;
• Fixes and hardening to YAML::XS, YAML::PP and libyaml;
• PPI saw several fixes and no fewer than 7 new releases;
• Perl::Version::Bumper updated to take advantage of the first of those 7 PPI releases;
• Continuous effort on MetaCPAN infrastructure: migration to Hetzner, improving secret management and monitoring;
• Proof of Concept of integrating GitHub Flavored Markdown to MetaCPAN;
• Huge progress on Automation Policy Metadata.

PAUSE

• Implemented new API token access;
• Security fixes (“rand rand rand rand”, “ABRA time” and “META symlinks”);
• New dockerized PAUSE;
• Various pentesting (e.g. reviewing YAML parser);
• Ongoing work on OAuth/OIDC;
• Several Pull Requests merged.

Funding

• A strong effort towards funding security work;
• General discussions about funding of the community.

Group discussions

On the topic of Toolchain

• META V3
• CPAN clients

On the topic of AI

• AI Policies Materials
• AI Policies Governance
• Share your AI tooling and tips!

On the topic of Security

• CRA presentation and Q&A

On the topic of Perl core

• Perl Ongoing and future features
• Perl core class/roles implementation
• Configure
• UTF-8
• Plan for Perl Platforms

Podcasts

• Configure
• Vienna.pm
• PPI
• the Perl Steering Council
• Karl Williamson

Why Sponsor Support Matters

Sponsors

• The Perl and Raku Foundation,
• Grant Street Group,
• Geizhals Preisvergleich,
• Vienna.pm,
• SUSE,
• Trans-Formed Media LLC,
• Ctrl O,
• Simplelists,
• HKS3 / Koha Support,
• Harald Jrg,
• Michele Beltrame (Sigmafin),
• Laurent Boivin.

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I saw Framework's new 'MacBook Pro for Linux users' and it may entice Windows fans, too

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Years of user feedback have led to the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro, an ultraportable device that's both modular and premium.

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Podlite comes to Perl: a lightweight block-based markup language for everyday use

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My name is Alex. Over the last years I've implemented several versions of the Raku’s documentation format (Synopsys 26 / Raku’s Pod) in Perl and JavaScript.At an early stage, I shared the idea of creating a lightweight version of Raku’s Pod, with Damian Conway, the original author of the Synopsys 26 Documentation specification (S26).He was supportive of the concept and offered several valuable insights that helped shape the vision of what later became Podlite.Today, Podlite is a small block-based markup language that is easy to read as plain text, simple to parse, and flexible enough to be used everywhere in code, notes, technical documents, long-form writing, and even full documentation systems.This article is an introduction for the Perl community what Podlite is, how it looks, how you can already use it in Perl via a source filter, and what's coming next.

The Block Structure of Podlite

Abbreviated blocks (=BLOCK)

=head1 Installation Guide=item Perl 5.8 or newer=para This tool automates the process.

• ends on the next directive or a blank line
• best used for simple one-line blocks
• cannot include configuration options (attributes)

Paragraph blocks (=for BLOCK)

=for code :lang<perl>say "Hello from Podlite!";

• ends when a blank line appears
• can include complex content
• allows attributes such as :lang, :id, :caption, :nested,

Delimited blocks (=begin BLOCK =end BLOCK)

=begin nested :notify<important>Make sure you have administrator privileges.=end nested

• explicit start and end markers
• perfect for code, lists, tables, notifications, markdown, formulas
• can contain other blocks, including nested ones

• all three forms represent the same block type
• attributes apply the same way (:lang, :caption, :id, )
• tools and renderers treat them uniformly
• nested blocks work identically
• you can freely mix styles inside a document

Example: Comparing POD and Podlite

Inside the Podlite Specification 1.0

• headings (=head1, =head2, )
• lists and definition lists, and including task lists
• tables (simple and advanced)
• CSV-backed tables
• callouts / notifications (=nested :notify<tip|warning|important|note|caution>)
• table of contents (=toc)
• includes (=include)
• embedded data (=data)
• pictures (=picture and inline P<>)
• formulas (=formula and inline F<>)
• user defined blocks and markup codes
• Markdown integration

Using Podlite in Perl via the source filter

use Podlite; # enable Podlite blocks inside Perl=head1 Quick Example=begin markdownPodlite can live inside your Perl programs.=end markdownprint "Podlite active\n";

Roadmap: what’s next for Podlite

• CLI tools
  • command-line utilities for converting Podlite to HTML, PDF, man pages, etc.
  • improve pipelines for building documentation sites from Podlite sources
• VS Code integration
• Ecosystem growth
  • develop comprehensive documentation and tutorials
  • community-driven block types and conventions

Try Podlite and share feedback

• ideas for useful block types
• suggestions for tools or integrations
• feedback on the syntax and specification

• CPAN: https://metacpan.org/pod/Podlite
• GitHub:https://github.com/podlite
• Specification
  • (HTML): https://podlite.org/specification
  • source: https://github.com/podlite/podlite-specs
• Project site: https://podlite.org
• Roadmap: https://podlite.org/#Roadmap

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I found the most useful parenting gadgets at CES 2026 - these are the ones I'd buy ASAP

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From a real-time breastfeeding monitor to a cute bladeless stroller fan, we've found some of the most interesting tech aimed at parents and children at CES.

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