2019.04 Summer of Code!

JJ Merelo, Makoto Nozaki and Mark Keating want you to think about Perl projects for this year’s Google Summer of Code. Please submit your idea(s) and/or let yourself be known as a potential mentor of a project (Facebook, LinkedIn comments). Having a good project accepted can not only help the student or the project, a student may well become another valued core contributor (such as Bart Wiegmans)!

FOSDEM 2019

This weekend will see yet another FOSDEM in Brussels. Unfortunately, there will not a Perl DevRoom this year. But there will be a Perl booth with free swag and Perl books / Perl Wine and stuffed Camelia’s for sale. So please stop by and say hello to the Camel and the Camelia!

A Picky Caller

Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer wrote a blog post about how handy it is being able to introspect the signature of a given pointy block, and use that as a condition on how to process the output of the execution of that block.

Apple Patenting

Ralph Mellor expressed his worries in relation to Perl 6 about Apple patenting certain software practices / algorithms.

Submit your Presentation Proposals!

This is the time of the year where you can submit your talk proposal to multiple Perl events, and be accepted by all of them. In chronological order:

• German Perl Workshop in Munich (6-8 March)
• DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop (6 April)
• Perl Conference in Pittsburgh, PA (17-19 June)
• Perl Conference in Riga, Latvia (7-9 August)

Perl 6 and WebKit

Xliff has posted a gist describing some attempts at interfacing Perl 6 with WebKit to create a browser. Complete with screen shots and code. Exciting stuff!

On the dynamic nature of $_

In the past, the $_ variable (aka the topic), has always internally been marked as a dynamic variable. This poses significant issues in optimizing code, so Jonathan Worthington has been working on making $_ purely lexical (which would allow it to be optimized to a local). This broke a number of modules in the ecosystem, that depend on $_ being accessible dynamically (which are now fixed, at least for the coming release).

It however also broke a core feature of rx//. The associated issue presents some ideas and thoughts about how the regression could be fixed now, while also having a path towards the future that would allow better optimizability. Thoughts / suggestions / fixes are welcome!

Other Core Developments

• Ticket status us past week.
• Paweł Murias added support for the utf16be encoding on the Javascript and JVM backends.
• Jonathan Worthington fixed some cases where error reporting would blow up, hiding the original error.
• Nick Logan fixed a problem with module disambiguation when determining which version of a module to load if no auth information is available.
• And many other smaller issues were fixed in preparation for the Rakudo 2019.01 Compiler Release.

Questions about Perl 6

• Multidimensional hash elements by con.
• How to make Perl 6 die on undefined values? by con.
• Why is PSIXDISTS excluded from modules.perl6.org’s rsync? by Patrick Spek.
• Invoke the right multi sub specialized by subtype(subset) by lovetomato.
• String matching in MAIN() parameters by Norman Gaywood.
• Unpack binary data by kkrev.
• Commands that work in shell produce failure when run inside Perl 6 by con.
• One liner execution. How is the topic updated? by Ruben Westerberg.
• Missing or wrong version of dependency after recompiling nqp by Håkon Hægland.
• Customising the parse return value, retaining unnamed terminals by Lars Dieckow.
• My first tiny Perl 6 program by _VZ_.

Meanwhile on Twitter

• Like other JetBrains with fallback license? by eater of cyber.
• Stronger than Ruby by who.
• Yearly/monthly releases by Brad Gilbert.
• Native support for grapheme clusters by Killian Evang.
• rex, regulus, regularity tried to solve by .
• Docker container? by JJ Merelo.
• Who manages @perl6? by JJ Merelo.
• Same thing in Perl 6 by Michaël Buffet.
• Solve @ vs $ by Y.Toriyama.
• Cannot use loop by Y.Toriyama.
• Python 2/3 and Perl 6 by Ewen McNeill.
• Example of POC by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• PerlCon vient de lancer by Mongueurs de Perl.
• Incredible ⅒ by Y.Toriyama.
• Parallellism talk accepted by Herbert Breunung.
• Ferris & Camelia by ryn1x.
• Two lines by ryn1x.
• Rakudo’s story by Perlゼミ.
• Implemented in NQP by Perlゼミ.
• With JVM? by T.A.C..
• It seems convenient by うたがわきき.
• Will it work on GraalVM? by T.A.C..
• Not much faster by 雅なラクダ.
• YAPC::Japan limited T-Shirts by GMO Developers.
• Forgot all zef options by じゅりあす.
• After a long absence by D.Aoki.
• Fun Challenge by まさきはるか(Usk).
• Application development in Perl 6 by yapcjapan.
• Time for Perl 6 by Tetsuji Ogata.
• MAIN function by D.Aoki.
• Easy to install by jitsu.
• Checks arguments and issues usage by D.Aoki.
• With this you can take-off. What? by トーカナイザの守護霊.
• Write Perl 6 on browser by みきお.pm.
• Current state? by coela.
• Type of Argument by jun.
• Implements USAGE by jitsu.
• In the browser: SixPad by ろずにゃっく.
• Learning Perl 6 Released by Perlゼミ.
• Many good stories by トーカナイザの守護霊.
• Play on the Web by maeyan.
• Fighting regular expression by うたがわきき.
• Published in 2018 by Tetsuji Ogata.
• Considerably more convenient by おｄｄ.
• Something like [a-zA-Z0-9]? by うたがわきき.
• Looks very useful by Likk.
• IDE for Perl 6? by meru.
• Module management: zef by jitsu.
• Module management: mi6 by jitsu.
• Perl 6 in browser by kamiokan.
• Friendly Perl 6 Primer by mktakuya.
• Looking forward to Japanese translation by kamimura.
• History by 水月 涼.
• Perl 6 grammar resembles Go by Rock in Cats×RYOrh+INTJ.
• Confused by kamimura.
• Project vs Language by tef’s public account.
• Waiting for the challenge! by gmo_recruit.
• Won! by うたがわきき.
• Alive? by B.G@今、無職が取れかかっている.
• Divided by まぬけのさひろ.
• Why did you leave? by Fernando Correa de Oliveira.
• Perl needed to build Perl 6 by Perlゼミ.
• Different Languages by jun.
• Incompatible by おまもりさん@T. Yamada.
• Slides of practical CLI use by tohta_bot.
• Measure performance by 奈良阪まぞく@VRChat Profile.
• Too strong by genzouzi.
• Perl 6 Lightning Talks by tohta_bot.
• Performance by 奈良阪まぞく@VRChat Profile.
• Not directly! by Endless Mason.
• Best talk! by yapcjapan.
• Learn a bit! by はるまき.
• Past week by The Perl Shop.
• A certain percentage of Perl 6 by Joel Berger.
• Indeed by ワ千キ.
• I haz a BSc in computer science by Karl D. Asmussen.
• BGP lint tool by Joelle Maslak.
• Similar to math by Joelle Maslak.
• Futuristic vs Realistic by ミツバ@エンジのニア.
• I want by Huisnummer #14.
• YAPC::Tokyo 2019 Impressions by このすみ.
• The Perl 6 IDE by who.
• PEP 207 by Carl Mäsak.

Meanwhile on Facebook

• Perl 6 Hackathon in Riga? by Andrew Shitov.
• Echt.pm meeting by Wendy van Dijk.
• Camelia shaped Cookies! (almost) by Wendy van Dijk.

Perl 6 in comments

• Tricky syntax by Ralph Mellor.
• Sometimes at compile time by Brad Gilbert.
• Too simple? by Ralph Mellor.
• Really shines in… by Simon Proctor.
• Scary to contemplate by Ralph Mellor.
• On indentation and free form by Ralph Mellor.
• Novice on parsing by Ralph Mellor.

Perl 6 Modules

New Modules:

• Crypt::CAST5 by Ben Davies.
• Path::Finder by Leon Timmermans.

Updated Modules:

• TAP, Getopt::Long, App::Prove6 by Leon Timmermans.
• Path::Router by Sterling Hanenkamp.
• Lumberjack::Dispatcher::Syslog, URI::FetchFile, LibraryCheck, EventSource::Server, Monitor::Monit, FastCGI::NativeCall, Pg::Notify, WebService::Soundcloud, Tinky::JSON, Audio::Sndfile, FastCGI::NativeCall::PSGI, Monitor::Monit, UNIX::Privileges by Jonathan Stowe.
• AttrX::Mooish by Vadim Belman.
• XML::XPath by Martin Barth.
• GTK::Glade by Marcel Timmerman.
• Net::BGP by Joelle Maslak.

Winding down

It was nice to see so many good Perl 6 things happening at the YAPC::Japan, resulting in quite some tweets! And a nice batch of updated and new modules on CPAN. Alas, no Rakudo Compiler Release just yet, but the number of blockers has gone down. More news about Perl 6 and FOSDEM next week!