Pcre2

[dirk-zimoch]

Support for pcre2 in addition to obsolete pcre version 1.
And some bugfixes.

[mdavidsaver]

in addition to obsolete pcre version 1.

Is it still necessary to support PCRE v1 as well?

With Debian, libpcre2-dev has been available for at least the past 3 releases.

[dirk-zimoch]

PCRE version 1 has reached end of life in 2021 and pcre2 is available since 2015. So yes, one can argue that pcre v1 support can be abandoned. Then I would suggest to abandon GNU regex support as well, because PCRE is so much more powerful.
But I did not want to drop support for something just because I don't need it any longer. (Then I would have dropped Windows support first, EPICS base V3 support second.) Maybe other people want to continue to use pcre v1. Or at least want to see a proof of 100% backward compatibility, which I cannot provide.
Also the tests should probably cover pcre2 but I have no idea how to do that.

[anjohnson]

The APS gateways (we have over 50 running) still use GNU Regex patterns, so thanks for not removing that support.