To *me*, the fix to pack "D" to cope with quadmath was the most important one as it broke installing modules down the chain. Thanks leont for fixing that!

I absolutely agree that this needed to be fixed - but I still have reservations about the actual fix that was implemented, and I raised those reservations (which were dismissed) in the discussions of that issue.

In perl 5.32 and earlier, if you are running a perl whose nvtype was double, and you try to pack/unpack using the "D" template, here's what you get:

C:\>perl -wle "$d = unpack 'D>', pack 'D>', 2.9; print $d"
Invalid type 'D' in pack at -e line 1.
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I regard that as a sane and sensible result.
Now, thanks to that fix, on a perl-5.34.0 whose nvtype is double, we get:

C:\>perl -wle "$ld = unpack 'D>', pack 'D>', 2.9; print $ld"
2.9
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with no mention that $ld is not a long double, even though a "long double" has been specifically requested via the "D" template.
I think the view is that no-one is going to make that mistake.
But I still wonder why we would want to allow the use of "D" template on a perl whose nvtype is double, given that the "D" template is entirely useless and pointless in that circumstance.
Anyway ... it's done now, and I shall live it with it.

The "pack" documentation for "D" now, as of perl-5.34.0, looks questionable to me:

D  A float of long-double precision in native format.
   (Long doubles are available only if your system supports
   long double values. Raises an exception otherwise.
   Note that there are different long double formats.)
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Do you really think that accurately describes the behaviour of the "D" template on a perl-5.34.0 with nvtype of double ?

Cheers,
Rob