The 5.2 release is protocol and source compatible with Globus Toolkit 5.0.

Major Changes between 5.0 and 5.2:

• Native packaging for linux distributions based on RPM and Debian package managers
• The concept of “flavors” of Globus libraries has been obsoleted
• Elimination of the compile-time distinction between threaded and non-threaded builds. All libraries are built to be thread-safe, but most applications and services will run by default without threads. The GLOBUS_THREAD_MODEL environment variable can be used to select between “none” (nothreads) and “pthreads” event-handling model.
• The toolkit has been reorganized to be compliant with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
• The environment variable GLOBUS_LOCATION is no longer required to be set at runtime (though it is still honored to allow non-native packages to be relocated).
• Shared library versioning to allow different versions of libraries to coexist.
• Simplified configuration: more default values for Globus service configurations (especially GRAM5), more admin tools for interacting with tools (GRAM gatekeeper, audit)
• Cleaner separate of configuration file and implementation for GRAM LRM modules.
• Elimination of GPT setup packages as a way to create default configuration files
• Much simplified globus-simple-ca package for managing a CA, including tools for distributing RPM and debian packages containing CA certificate and policy files.
• More user-installable documentation and man pages for tools and libraries
• Many bug fixes

For more information about GT 5.2 visit http://dev.globus.org/wiki/Globus_Toolkit/5.2